Best Selected Poems
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Opened Ground is a 1998 anthology of selected poems and prose by the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney. This comprehensive volume charts his literary career from his 1966 debut, Death of a Naturalist, through to his later works written up until 1996. The collection serves as an accessible...
The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks is a poetry collection published in 2005 by the Library of America. Edited by Elizabeth Alexander, the book provides a selection of works from the career of Gwendolyn Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet from Chicago. The collection spans several decades, highlighting...
"Selected Poems of Langston Hughes" is a 1959 poetry collection personally curated by the author to survey his work from the 1920s through the 1950s. As a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes used his poetry to document the everyday experiences, struggles, and musical heritage of Black A...
How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2001 is a poetry collection by American author Joy Harjo, published in 2002. Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation, draws on Indigenous history, oral tradition, and personal narrative in her work. The volume compiles poems from her earlier col...
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke refers to various published anthologies that compile the works of the prominent Bohemian-Austrian poet (1875–1926). These collections introduce readers to Rilke's modernist, lyrical style, which heavily features existential themes, mysticism, and introspective re...
The Essential Neruda is a bilingual poetry collection published in 2004 by City Lights Books. It features selected poems from the Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, presented in both their original Spanish and English translations. The translations were handled by a group of prominent poets and tr...
The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance is Audre Lorde's final poetry collection, published posthumously in 1993. The collection contains 39 poems written between 1987 and 1992, during the same period when Lorde was battling the cancer that would ultimately claim her life in 1992. As one of the most i...
Final Harvest is an anthology of poetry by the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson, originally published in 1961 by Little, Brown and Company. The collection features 576 poems meticulously selected and edited by Thomas H. Johnson, who was the first scholar to compile her verses in their unal...
Shake Loose My Skin is a collection of poetry by the American author Sonia Sanchez, published in 1999. The volume gathers selections from her earlier works alongside new poems, highlighting her role as a prominent voice in the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez's writing in this collection is noted for it...
19 Varieties of Gazelle is a 2002 poetry collection by the Palestinian-American author Naomi Shihab Nye. The book compiles new and selected poems that explore Middle Eastern culture, heritage, and the experiences of Arab Americans. In 2002, the collection was named a finalist for the National Book A...
Published in 1995, this volume compiles the expansive works of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, highlighting his role as a central poet of the American Beat Generation.
How to Carry Water is a 2020 selection of poems by American poet Lucille Clifton, spanning work on Black identity, family, the body, and survival.
