National Poetry Month: Poems for All

By Lindsay Roseberry, Reference Department

Most people encounter poems as a child first and poetry books for kids are fun and often silly. Kids love being read to and many poems are made to be read aloud.   It’s when we grow up and forced to study specific poems and poetry that we lose interest. That’s why April has become “poetry month,” to encourage everyone to find their enjoyment of poetry again. And poetry really is for everyone. Or rather, there is at least one poem out there for each person that will touch them in some way. You just have to find it.

In order to help people find their enjoyment of poetry again, I hope to introduce you to a few good or unusual poetry books. Of course, if you just want to browse through our poetry books, in our Nonfiction section, which includes poetry, our library organize by the Dewey Decimal System, where American poetry is usually found in the 811s and British poetry is usually found in the 821s.

To refesh your memory about fun children’s poems, have a look at these:

• Falling up: poems and drawings by Shel Silverstein (J 811.6 SIL )
• A bad case of the giggles: kids’ favorite funny poems (J 811.08089282 BAD)
• Where the sidewalk ends by Shel Silverstein (J 811.54 SIL)
• A light in the attic by Shel Silverstein (J 811.54 SIL)
• I’ve lost my hippopotamus by Jack Prelutsky (J 811.54 PRE)
• My dog ate my homework! a collection of funny poems (J 811.54 LAN)
• Stopping by woods on a snowy evening by Robert Frost (J 811.52 FRO)
• Dirt on my shirt: selected poems (J E Fox)
• For laughing out loud: an anthology of poems to tickle your funny bone (J 808.81 FOR)
• Pizza, pigs, and poetry: how to write a poem (J 811.54 PRE)

Want to get back to poetry or rediscovery your love for it? Try these books:

• How to read a poem: and fall in love with poetry (808.1 HIR)
• How to haiku: a writer’s guide to haiku and related forms (808.1 ROS)
• Essential pleasures: a new anthology of poems to read aloud (808.81 ESS)

Most all adults have read Beowulf, one of the oldest extant English poems. Seamus Heaney won awards and rave reviews for his new translation of this epic poem (829.3 BEO). If Beowulf is too long, maybe you should try this book of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poems with a mouthful title, Ten Old English Poems Put into Modern English Alliterative Verse (821.1 MAL).

If you really want to get adventurous, try listening to the Iliad or The Odyssey. It’s easier to listen to, somehow. Perhaps because it was recited for centuries!? And maybe try The Aeneid for the same reason. Virgil wanted to write a great Roman epic and he definitely succeeded.

• The Iliad by Homer (883.01 HOM)
• The Odyssey by Homer (883 HOM)
• The Aeneid by Virgil (873.01 VIR)

For something completely different, try reading haiku, or maybe writing them. They are short and usually describe a nature scene. There is a definite pattern for haiku: the first line has five syllables, the second line had seven syllables and the third line has five syllables. The best things about haiku are they are short and they don’t have to rhyme!

• Haiku landscapes: in sun, wind, rain and snow (808.1 ADD)
• Haiku love (895.6104108 HAI)
• Haiku: an anthology of Japanese poems (895.6104108 HAI)

And for a different kind of haiku, try these:

• Haiku for the single girl (811.6 GRI)
• Redneck haiku: Bubba-sized with more than 150 new haiku! (811.6 WIT)

If you are feeling patriotic or want to celebrate patriotic holidays, this is the book for you:

• A patriot’s handbook : songs, poems, stories, and speeches celebrating the land we love / selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy (810.8 KEN)

For poems written from another culture’s point of view, check out these books. Hah, check out these books!!! A little library humor for you.

• The Southern poetry anthology, Volume VI, Tennessee (811.50809768 SOU)
• Angles of ascent: a Norton anthology of contemporary African American poetry (811.09 ANG)
• Voices of the rainbow: contemporary poetry by Native Americans (811.54080897 VOI)
• S O S: poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka (811.54 BAR)
• Reflections: poems of dreams and betrayals by Adebayo Oyebade (811 OYE)
• No enemies, no hatred: selected essays and poems by Liu Xiaobo (895.1452 LIU)

For those trying to say something romantic, nothing is as good as a poem. Here are a few books to get inspiration from (or to copy and give your beloved, showing how much you care.)

• Rumi : the book of love : poems of ecstasy and longing, translations and commentary by Coleman Barks (891.5511 RUM)
• The essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (891.5511 RUM)
• Art & love: an illustrated anthology of love poetry (808.81 ART)
• Ten poems to open your heart by Roger Housden (811.6 HOU)
• Sonnets from the Portuguese and other love poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (821.8 BRO)
• Twenty love poems and a song of despair by Pablo Neruda (861 NER)
• Love poems and sonnets of William Shakespeare (822.33 SHA)
• If there is something to desire: one hundred poems by Vera Pavlova; translated from the Russian by Steven Seymour (891.715 PAV)

For those who want to explore military themes, and get a real feeling of battle and the letdown of safety after, here are some from older wars and present conflicts.

• “Words for the hour”: a new anthology of American Civil War poetry (811.0080358 WOR)
• Some desperate glory: the First World War the poets knew by Max Egremont (821.912 EGR)
• Poets of World War I: Rupert Brooke & Siegfried Sassoon (YA 821 POE)
• Visions of war, dreams of peace: writings of women in the Vietnam War (811.54080358 VIS)
• Lines in long array: a Civil War commemoration: poems and photographs, past and present (811.008 LIN)
• Here, bullet by Brian Turner (811.6 TUR)

In case you think poetry is just a “girl thing”, here are a few books for men:

• Poems that make grown men cry: 100 men on the words that move them (821.008 POE)
• The Bar-D roundup a compilation of classic and contemporary poetry from CowboyPoetry.com (CD 811.54 08 BAR)
• Lessons from a desperado poet: how to find your way when you don’t have a map, how to win the game (811.54 BLA)
• Poetry for guys– who thought they hated poetry (811.008 POE)

A few offerings of humorous poems for grown-ups

• O, what a luxury: verses lyrical, vulgar, pathetic & profound by Garrison Keillor (811.6 KEI)
• Ogden Nash’s zoo (811.52 NAS)
• How did I get to be 40: & other atrocities and other poems by Judith Viorst (811.54 VIO)
• I’m too young to be seventy: and other delusions by Judith Viorst (811 VIO)

Other poetry books to consider that are recent and don’t really fit a category:

• It’s probably nothing, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love my implants by Micki Myers (811.6 MYE)
• Words for empty and words for full by Bob Hicok (811.54 HIC)
• Horoscopes for the dead: poems by Billy Collins (811.54 COL)
  • Mr. Collins was a US Poet Laureate – a big deal!
• Firecracker red by Stellasue Lee (808.810082 LEE)
  • Ms. Lee is a local poet

This book is in a category all by itself – and funny!

• I could pee on this: and other poems by cats by Francesco Marciuliano (811.6 MAR)

 

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Sources:

• http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-haiku.html
• http://toyomasu.com/haiku/
• http://www.abcteach.com/free/h/howto_haiku.pdf