Book picks similar to
Ache. by Lillian Olson


poetry
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poetry-books
mental-health

The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen


Wilfred Owen - 1918
    By the time Owen was killed at the age of 25 at the Battle of Sambre, he had written what are considered to be the most important British poems of WWI. This definitive edition is based on manuscripts of Owen's papers in the British Museum and other archives.

I Find You in the Darkness


Alfa Holden - 2018
    Love. Heartbreak. Alfa knows them all, and I Find You in the Darkness will lead you down her twisting paths of passion and pain with the poetry that has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people on Instagram and Facebook. Find your truest self revealed through Alfa’s carefully chosen words, and discover the love you’ve been waiting for. This volume belongs in the collection of every modern poetry fan.

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.

Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart


Alice Walker - 2018
    From poems of painful self-inquiry, to celebrating the simple beauty of baking frittatas, Walker offers us a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and, above all, gratitude. Whether she’s urging us to preserve an urban paradise or behold the delicate necessity of beauty to the spirit, Walker encourages us to honor the divine that lives inside all of us and brings her legendary free verse to the page once again, demonstrating that she remains a revolutionary poet and an inspiration to generations of fans.

Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems


Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1954
    The marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett has been well named "the most perfect example of wedded happiness in the history of literature - perfect in the inner life and perfect in its poetical expression."

Leaves of Grass


Walt Whitman - 1855
    A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century.

Call Us What We Carry


Amanda Gorman - 2021
    Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including “The Hill We Climb,” the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country’s consciousness while being utterly timeless.The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.

Poems to Fix a F**ked Up World


Various Poets - 2019
    . .Taking as its starting point the classic 'wheel of balance' life-coach model, this beautifully packaged collection of extracts and short poems gathers wisdom old and new in a perfect gift for anyone who needs comfort in this f**ked up world of ours.'This is not a poetry book as you know it, this is a life raft.' Emerald Street on Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t.

The Feather Room


Anis Mojgani - 2011
    In The Feather Room, Mojgani further explores storytelling in poetic form while traveling farther down the path of magic realism, endowing his tales with a greater sense of fantasy and brightness. The work recounts loss and heartbreak while discovering lightness and beauty on the other side. Throughout the book, Mojgani opens tree trunks to reveal chandeliers. He leads us through the rooms inside himself, using poems to part curtains and paint walls. He is lifting windows to let the fantasy indoors.

The Rose That Blooms in the Night


Allie Michelle - 2019
    This poetry collection is a journey of finding the strength it takes to be soft. The Rose That Blooms in the Night is a collection of poems from spoken word poet, yoga instructor, podcaster, and Instagram influencer Allie Michelle. The collection is meant to be a mirror reflecting the love inside of those who read it. It tells the tale of transformational cycles we experience throughout our lives. Falling in and out of love. Feeling lost and rediscovering our purpose. Learning to create a home within our own skin instead of seeking it in other people and places.

The Day Is Ready for You


Alison Malee - 2018
    The Day Is Ready for You is a prose and poetry collection weaving together the fractured, gritty pieces of the past, and the light that can break through an open window if you let it.This is the first book of a two-book series about grace, heartbreak, and breathing freely. I will tell you again and again: in some small way, everything matters.

Oculus: Poems


Sally Wen Mao - 2019
    The title poem follows a nineteen-year-old girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram. Other poems cross into animated worlds, examine robot culture, and haunt a necropolis for electronic waste. A fascinating sequence spanning the collection speaks in the voice of the international icon and first Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong, who travels through the history of cinema with a time machine, even past her death and into the future of film, where she finds she has no progeny. With a speculative imagination and a sharpened wit, Mao powerfully confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen, the intimacies made possible and ruined by the screen, and the many roles and representations that women of color are made to endure in order to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.

How to Cure a Ghost


Fariha Roisin - 2019
    Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Róisín and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities.

Somebody Give This Heart a Pen


Sophia Thakur - 2019
    The collection is arranged as life is: from youth to school, to home life, falling in love and falling straight back out again. The poems draw on the author’s experience as a young mixed-race young woman trying to make sense of a lonely and complicated world. With a strong narrative voice and emotional empathy, this is poetry that will resonate with all young people, whatever their background, and whatever their dreams. As she says, she hopes the poems will help readers "grow through what they go through".

What the Living Do: Poems


Marie Howe - 1997
    What the Living Do reflects "a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe's writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form . . . a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation" (Boston Globe).