The Wild Iris was written during a ten-week period in the summer of 1991. Louise Gluck's first four collections consistently returned to the natural world, to the classical and biblical narratives that arose to explain the phenomena of this world, to provide meaning and to console. Ararat, her fifth book, offered a substitution for the received: a demotic, particularized myth of contemporary family. Now in The Wild Iris, her most important and accomplished...

An anthology of the poems of Carl Sandburg.

""Wagoner's words are a living link to the world, enacting it so vitally that they feel like natural facts."-The Seattle TimesIn his twenty-fourth book of poetry, David Wagoner reflects on youth, love, regret, and expectation versus reality. Here a master writes at top form, back-dropped by life's curious moments and imagining Jesus as an untidy roommate or considering our final destination in "Beginner's Guide to Death.""After the Point of No Return"After...

A collection of humorous poems such as "The Dancing Hippopotami," "You Can't Make Me Eat That," "My Father's Name is Sasquatch," and "Dear Wumbledeedumble."

"Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility--"What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?"--And a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: "Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something...

This debut collection is alert to disasters-the flooding of New Orleans and the wildfires of California-and also to the hope of rescue. Interior dramas of the self are played out in a clash of poetic traditions, exuberant imagery, and wild metaphor. Ed Skoog, who worked for years in the basement of a museum in New Orleans, developed personal connections to objects and paintings. "Working on an exhibition about the building trades was important to...

"Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years. Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Primitive presents a new collection of poems that reflects her signature imagery-based language and her observations of the unaffected beauty of nature.--Publisher's description. "In this stunning collection of new poems, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has defined her life's work, describing with wonder both the everyday and the unaffected beauty of nature. Herons, sparrows, owls, and kingfishers...

For the first time, the complete collection of Maya Angelou's published poems-including "On the Pulse of Morning"--In a permanent collectible, handsome hardcover edition.

In this wise and intimate telling--which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending--Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband's smile to the set of his hip. Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and even generous...