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There's a Book for That: National Poetry Month

“Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.” –Dylan Thomas

Happy National Poetry Month! In April we celebrate the power and beauty of poetry – with poetry readings, workshops, and new publications. Poetry anthologies are a wonderful way to discover poems and poets brought together under a theme. Below are some of our most popular.

THE VOICE THAT IS GREAT WITHIN US: AMERICAN POETRY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY edited by Hayden Carruth

This famous anthology includes the works of more than 130 major American poets of the modern period—Robert Frost, Paul Goodman, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Gwendolyn Brooks among them—along with short biographies of each.

“Not only the best on its period, I think, but is even perhaps safe from the competition of rivals.”—Robert Lowell

A CENTURY OF POETRY IN THE NEW YORKER: 1925-2025 edited by New Yorker Magazine Inc, Kevin Young

Edited by the magazine’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, a celebratory selection from one hundred years of influential, entertaining, and taste-making verse in The New Yorker

AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY: 250 YEARS OF STRUGGLE & SONG (LOA #333): A LIBRARY OF AMERICA ANTHOLOGY edited by Kevin Young

Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Capturing the power and beauty of this diverse tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry reveals as never before its centrality and its challenge to American poetry and culture.

A HAPPY POEM TO START EVERY DAY by Jane McMorland Hunter

With one happy poem for every single day of the year, keep this book by your bedside for a serotonin boost upon waking, on the kitchen counter for a pick-me-up while your coffee brews, or in your backpack for a moment of (rare) commuting joy. With delightful illustrations throughout and a vast range of poems, it’ll be easy to find something that sparks joy within you. From the timeless phrasing of John Keats and Rūmī to the celebratory observations of Wendy Cope, OBE, and Pulitzer Prize–winner Rita Dove, there’ll be a moment of delight ready and waiting, just for you.

LATINO POETRY (LOA #382) edited by Rigoberto GonzálezThis landmark Latinx poetry collection offers “a wondrous journey through the passions, the ideas, and the diversity of a people redefining what it means to be American” (Héctor Tobar, Pulitzer Prize winner). It includes more than 180 poets, spanning from the 17th century to today, and presents those poems written in Spanish in the original and in English translation.

THE PENGUIN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY edited by Rita Dove

Recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award (Dove)

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, introduces readers to the most significant and compelling poems of the past hundred years in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Now available in paperback, this indispensable volume represents the full spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities—with varying styles, voices, themes, and cultures—while balancing important poems with vital periods of each poet. Featuring works by Mary Oliver, Derek Walcott, John Ashbery, Gwendolyn Brooks, Kevin Young, Terrance Hayes, Li-Young Lee, Joanna Klink and A.E. Stallings, Dove’s selections paint a dynamic and cohesive portrait of modern American poetry.

INVISIBLE STRINGS: 113 POETS RESPOND TO THE SONGS OF TAYLOR SWIFT edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

113 profound poems inspired by Taylor Swift’s music to deconstruct and decipher—each secretly corresponds to a different song! Are you ready for it?!

The collection showcases a diverse and accomplished array of writers including the 23rd US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Pulitzer Prize winners Diane Seuss, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, Rae Armantrout, Paul Muldoon, and Gregory Pardlo, National Book Critics Circle Award winners Mary Jo Bang and Laura Kasischke, and bestselling poets Maggie Smith, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kate Baer, amanda lovelace, Tyler Knott Gregson, and Jane Hirshfield.

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ELEGY: POEMS OF MEMORY, MOURNING AND CONSOLATION edited by Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan

The only comprehensive anthology of its kind in the English language, The Penguin Book of Elegy is a profound and moving compendium of the fundamentally human urges to remember and honor the dead, and to give comfort to those who survive them.

THE ECHOING GREEN: POEMS OF FIELDS, MEADOWS, AND GRASSES edited by Cecily Parks

The rich poetic history of grass spans the centuries, from the pastoral poems of ancient Rome to the fields and prairies of the New World. The rapturous idealizations of William Blake’s “echoing green” and William Wordsworth’s “splendour in the grass” stand in vivid contrast to the obliterating greenery on human battlefields in war poems such as John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” and Carl Sandburg’s “Grass,” or to the work of contemporary poets—Lucia Perillo, Harryette Mullen, Denise Levertov, and Gary Soto among them—who reflect on an age of environmental crisis. Here is a rich array of poets from around the world, including Virgil, T’ao Ch’ien, Bashō, Andrew Marvell, Robert Burns, Victor Hugo, Christina Rossetti, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anna Akhmatova, Willa Cather, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Tomas Tranströmer, Sherman Alexie, and Derek Walcott, in a dazzling celebration of our complicated relationship to nature.

For more on these and other relevant titles visit National Poetry Month

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Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on social media? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com