Book picks similar to
Beautiful Mistakes by R.J. Avenira
poetry
poems
tbr-poetry
poetry-tbr
Vertigo: Of Love & Letting Go
Analog De Leon - 2017
In this modern epic poem, poet Analog de Leon (Chris Purifoy) offers an empowering message to anyone who has loved, lost, or yearned for freedom.Inspired by the life of Syrian Saint Simeon Stylites, a 4th-century Monk who lived for many years on a small platform atop a pillar, Vertigo encourages introspection, contemplation, and self-love.
excerpts from the book i'll never write
Nadia Nell Starbinski - 2017
Divided into four sections: love, loss, acceptance, and growth- the content serves the purpose of making you feel and finding the light at the end of the tunnel.
Of Yesteryear
Lauren Eden - 2016
In her debut, Lauren Eden’s succinct and beautiful observations of human nature and its gains and losses will lead readers to understand their own journey in love and self discovery - now, and of yesteryear.
peluda
Melissa Lozada-Oliva - 2017
Humorous and biting, personal and communal, self-deprecating and unapologetically self-loving, peluda (meaning “hairy” or “hairy beast”) is the poet at her best. The book explores the relationship between femininity and body hair as well as the intersections of family, class, the immigrant experience, Latina identity, and much more, all through Lozada-Oliva’s unique lens and striking voice. peluda is a powerful testimony on body image and the triumph over taboo.
Life on Mars
Tracy K. Smith - 2011
What Would your life say if it could talk? —from “No Fly Zone”With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like “love” and “illness” now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
Chen Chen - 2017
Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.In the HospitalMy mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend.But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, shortskeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday.My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend.Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonablepigeons. No one had the time & our solution to itwas to buy shinier watches. We were enamored withwhat our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital& I didn’t want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale,bad plot, great wifi in the atypical café. My mother was in the hospital& she didn’t want to be her friend. She wanted to be the familygrocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn’t trust my fatherto be it. You always forget something, she said, even whenI do the list for you. Even then.
Viral Poems
Lily Myers - 2013
This anthology of poems and essays is a forceful argument for the continuing cultural relevance of poetry.
Library of Small Catastrophes
Alison C. Rollins - 2019
Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges’ fascination with the library, Rollins uses the concept of the archive to offer a lyric history of the ways in which we process loss. “Memory is about the future, not the past,” she writes, and rather than shying away from the anger, anxiety, and mourning of her narrators, Rollins’ poetry seeks to challenge the status quo, engaging in a diverse, boundary-defying dialogue with an ever-present reminder of the ways race, sexuality, spirituality, violence, and American culture collide.
Don't Call Us Dead
Danez Smith - 2017
Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces," Smith writes, some of us all at once. Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--"Dear White America"--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.
Soft in the Middle
Shelby Eileen - 2017
"there are so many words I've left unsaidso instead of going another year or five or tenin brutal, crushing silencedon't waste this opportunitydon't be scared when the full weight of my hearttests the strength of your handsI'm trusting you with something I barely trust myself withthis knowingthis tellingthis momentous uprootingI'm hereI amI am right here in these words"A debut poetry collection about love, heartbreak, body image, how absolutely breathtaking girls are, flower blooms and starlight.
i am tired of being a dandelion
Zane Frederick - 2020
Life presents a multitude of moments we hope work in our favor. One moment has us building a fortress of daydreams and anticipation, and the next it may come crumbling down.Yet, no matter how many times our hopes fall, we seem to be able to rebuild them again and again. i am tired of being a dandelion explores the spectrum of hope in romance and self love, along with the hope to grow to become the best version of oneself.
When He Leaves You
Michaela Angemeer - 2018
It dives into themes of love, loss, a connection to water, and never forgetting what it means to be alive. Separated into six sections: Childhood, Him, Everything Is You, Over, Repairing, and Perspective, it takes you on a journey to find a new outlook.
bare roots
Molly S. Hillery - 2017
I even had to take some breaks. It's just so incredibly relatable.""Absolutely obsessed and inspired.""I feel so seen reading her work; it's very powerful.""WOW. Her writing truly heals." bare roots has consistently been a bestseller in women's poetry since its debut in April of 2017. Readers were originally captivated by Hillery's fiesty, feminine style of poetry and her ability to bear her soul [and trauma] to the world. Published six months before the rise and height of the "Me Too" Movement, Hillery echoes sentiments bravely expressed by many women who decided that enough was enough. She hopes that by sharing her story of trauma and mental illness, she will empower other women to continue to speak up and rise above.[Original description]: "bare roots is a collection of poetry written for anyone that has ever buried parts of themselves away from the world. The book is divided into six parts— Pruning the Damage, Battling the Weeds, The Roses [and the Thorns], The Seedling Shall Blossom, Cultivating Wisdom, and Buds of Hope are delicately crafted segments that touch on the subjects of femininity, love and loss, trauma, mental illness, the search for meaning, and ultimately, how to grow from it all." Some portions of this book contain mature content and may be triggering to some readers.
Postcolonial Love Poem
Natalie Díaz - 2020
Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.
Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Rainer Maria Rilke - 1899
He "received" a series of poems about which he did not speak for a long time - he considered them sacred, and different from anything else he ever had done and ever would do again. This poet saw the coming darkness of the century, and saw the struggle we would have in our relationship to the divine. The poet was Rainer Maria Rilke, and these love poems to God make up his Book of Hours.
