Swimming Lessons: Poems


Lili Reinhart - 2020
     Swimming Lessons explores the euphoric beginnings of young love, battling anxiety and depression in the face of fame, and the inevitable heartbreak that stems from passion. Relatable yet deeply intimate, provocative yet comforting, bite-sized yet profound, Lili's poems reflect her trademark honesty and unique perspective. Accompanied by striking and evocative illustrations, Swimming Lessons reveals the depths of female experience, and is the work of a storyteller who is coming into her own.

The Book of Men


Dorianne Laux - 2011
    Laux is "continually engaging and, at her best, luminous" (San Diego Union-Tribune).from "To Kiss Frank," make out with him a bit, this is what my friend would like to do oh these too many dead summers later, and as much as I want to stroll with her into the poet's hazy fancy all I can see is O'Hara's long gone lips fallen free of the bone, slumbering beneath the grainy soil.

Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty


Nikita Gill - 2017
    Featuring rewritten fairytale heroines, goddess wisdom, and poetry that burns with revolution, this collection is an explosion of femininity, empowerment, and personal growth.

No Matter the Wreckage


Sarah Kay - 2014
    No Matter the Wreckage presents readers with new and beloved work that showcases Kay's knack for celebrating family, love, travel, history, and unlikely love affairs between inanimate objects ("Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire"), among other curious topics. Both fresh and wise, Kay's poetry allows readers to join in on her journey of discovering herself and the world around her. It's an honest and powerful collection.

Born to Love, Cursed to Feel


Samantha King - 2016
    Sin comes a new voice, Samantha King’s raw, relatable poetry both celebrates love and mourns the human “curse to feel.” Her verse transports readers to the most private reaches of love and longing. Born to Love, Cursed to Feel is about love—the good, the bad, and the confusing. It touches on morals and how when emotions are involved it’s not as black and white. The poetry is frequently written in a narrative manner that evocatively pulls you in and makes you feel. This book is about falling in love, bad decisions, and ultimately growth. The essence of it all is to show that no matter how far one falls all the mistakes don’t have to be what defines them.

She Felt Like Feeling Nothing


R.H. Sin - 2018
    Sin pursues themes of self-discovery and retrospection. With this book, the poet intends to create a safe space where women can rest their weary hearts and focus on themselves.

Bright Dead Things


Ada Limon - 2015
    Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a “huge beating genius machine” striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. “I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón’s work is consistently generous and accessible—though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.

Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals


Patricia Lockwood - 2014
    The poems’ subject is the natural world, but their images would never occur in nature. This book is serious and funny at the same time, like a big grave with a clown lying in it.

Black Girl, Call Home


Jasmine Mans - 2021
    With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

Please Don't Go Before I Get Better


Madisen Kuhn - 2018
    Chronicling the complexities, joys, and challenges of this transitional phase of life, Please Don’t Go Before I Get Better is a powerful, deeply affecting work that pierces your heart with its refreshing candor and vulnerability. A poignant exploration of self-image, self-discovery, and self-reflection, this anthology brilliantly captures the universal experience of growing up, and you are bound to find yourself reflected in these glimmering pages.

Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism


Danielle Barnhart - 2018
    Editors Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan have drawn on their profound knowledge of the poetry scene to put together an extraordinary list of poets taking a feminist stance against the new authority. What began as an informal collaboration of like-minded poets—to be released as a handbound chapbook—has grown into something far more substantial and ambitious: a fully fledged anthology of women’s resistance, with a portion of proceeds supporting Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights.Representing the complexity and diversity of contemporary womanhood and bolstering the fight against racism, sexism, and violence, this collection unites powerful new writers, performers, and activists with established poets. Contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Sandra Beasley, Jericho Brown, Mahogany L. Browne, Danielle Chapman, Tyehimba Jess, Kimberly Johnson, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Maureen N. McLane, Joyce Peseroff, Mary Ruefle, Trish Salah, Patricia Smith, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zucker.

Honeybee


Trista Mateer - 2014
    It’s not something they say. It’s something about their hands, the shape of their mouths, the way they look walking away from you."A collection that will beg you to be dogeared, coffee-stained, & shared.”—Amanda Lovelace, author of the princess saves herself in this oneHoneybee is an honest take on walking away and still feeling like you were walked away from. It’s about cutting love loose like a kite string and praying the wind has the decency to carry it away from you. It’s an ode to the back and forth, the process of letting something go but not knowing where to put it down. Honeybee is putting it down. It’s small town girls and plane tickets, a taste of tenderness and honey, the bandage on the bee sting. It’s a reminder that you are not defined by the people you walk away from or the people who walk away from you."A spine tingling, heart wrenching, goosebumps-across-your-skin experience."—Nikita Gill, author of Fierce FairytalesPerfect for fans of Caroline Kaufman, Atticus, Clementine von Radics, Nina LaCour, Adam Silvera, and Becky Albertalli; or anyone interested in bisexuality, heartbreak, running away from your problems, and coming out.Look for Trista Mateer's other book of poetry, Aphrodite Made Me Do It and her contribution to [Dis]Connected Volume 1: Poems & Stories of Connection and Otherwise.

Hold Your Own


Kate Tempest - 2014
    Based on the myth of the blind prophet Tiresias, Hold Your Own is a riveting tale of youth and experience, sex and love, wealth and poverty, community and alienation. Walking in the forest one morning, a young man disturbs two copulating snakes - and is punished by the goddess Hera, who turns him into a woman. This is only the beginning of his journey . . . Weaving elements of classical myth, autobiography and social commentary, Tempest uses the story of the gender-switching, clairvoyant Tiresias to create four sequences of poems: 'childhood', 'manhood', 'womanhood' and 'blind profit'. The result is a rhythmically hypnotic tour de force - and a hugely ambitious leap forward for one of the UK's most talented and compelling young writers.

Film for Her


Orion Carloto - 2020
    Through photographs, poetry, prose, and a short story, Orion Carloto invites readers to remember the forgotten and reach into the past, find comfort in the present, and make sense of the intangible future. Film photography isn’t just eye candy; it’s timeless and romantic—the ideal complement to Carloto’s writing. In Film for Her, much like a visual diary, word and image are intertwined in a book perfect for both gift and self-purchase.

Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across


Mary Lambert - 2018
    In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert's Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across emerges as an important new voice in poetry, providing strength and resilience even in the darkest of times.