Representing twenty nationalities and ranging in age from their early 20s to their late 80s, the majority are public figures not prone to crying. Here they admit to breaking down when ambushed by great art, often in words as powerful as the poems themselves.Their selections include classics by visionaries such as Walt Whitman, W.H Auden, and Philip Larkin, as well as contemporary works by masters including Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and poets who span the globe from Pablo Neruda to Rabindranath Tagore.Seventy-five percent of the selected poems were written in the twentieth century, with more than a dozen by women including Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Their themes range from love in its many guises, through mortality and loss, to the beauty and variety of nature. Three men have suffered the pain of losing a child; others are moved to tears by the exquisite way a poet captures, in Alexander Pope's famous phrase, 'what oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.'From J. J. Abrams to John le Carré, Salman Rushdie to Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Radcliffe to Nick Cave, Billy Collins to Stephen Fry, Stanley Tucci to Colin Firth, and Seamus Heaney to Christopher Hitchens, this collection delivers private insight into the souls of men whose writing, acting, and thinking are admired around the world.

    ―from "Fire" The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands is Nick Flynn's first new poetry collection in nearly a decade. What begins as a meditation on love and the body soon breaks down into a collage of voices culled from media reports, childhood memories, testimonies from Abu Ghraib detainees, passages from documentary films, overheard conversations, and scraps of poems and song, only to reassemble with a gathering sonic force. It's as if all the noise that fills our days were a storm, yet at the center is a quiet place, but to get there you must first pass through the storm, with eyes wide open, singing. Each poem becomes a hallucinatory, shifting experience, through jump cut, lyric persuasion, and deadpan utterance. This is an emotional, resilient response to some of the essential issues of our day by one of America's riskiest and most innovative writers.

    In her second single-poem volume, Kay takes readers along a lyrical road toward empowerment, exploring the promise and complicated reality of being a woman. During her spoken word poetry performances, audiences around the world have responded strongly to Sarah Kay's poem The Type. As Kay wrote in The Huffington Post: "Much media attention has been paid to what it means to 'be a woman,' but often the conversation focuses on what it means to be a woman in relation to others. I believe these relationships are important. I also think it is possible to define ourselves solely as individuals... We have the power to define ourselves: by telling our own stories, in our own words, with our own voices."Never-before-published in book form, The Type is illustrated throughout and perfect for gift-giving.

    Between facing the traumas of her past and navigating daily life, the narrator of Magdalene yearns for the guidance of her spiritual teacher, a Christ figure, whose death she continues to grieve. Erotic, spirited, and searching for meaning, she is a woman striving to be the subject of her own life, fully human and alive to the sacred in the mortal world.

    With an exuberant appetite for “my morning song, my scurry-step, my dew,” anchored in complicated human situations, this astounding young poet’s third collection of poems is her strongest yet.

    Presented with the Spanish text, full-color reproductions of handwritten poems, and dynamic English translations, Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems simultaneously completes and advances the oeuvre of the world's most beloved poet.

    Since his poems first began to appear in the pages of The New Yorker and Poetry, there has been a lot of excited talk about the fresh and inventive work of Michael Robbins. Equal parts hip- hop, John Berryman, and capitalism seeking death and not finding it, Robbins's poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and completely unlike anything else being written today. As allusive as the Cantos, as aggressive as a circular saw, this debut collection will offend none but the virtuous, and is certain to receive an enormous amount of attention.

    It's a collection of poetry and passages that depict struggle of a human mind with it's veiled and untamed nature. It show how far we can go if we incline ourselves to that side and how much we are willing to give up.Psychaotic tells you the harsh realities of life rather than filling your head with fantasies and dreams that will never happen.In that reality check, this book will change how you think about certain things. It will tell you, that wrongs can be right and right can be wrongs as well as, bad can be good and good can turn out to be bad.

    because she's currently living it. A graphic artist, Sam started creating doodles and funny poems about her life as a 25-year-old. And when she decided to put them on Instagram, the captions were full of other people tagging friends and saying, "This is literally us." At a time where it seems like everyone around you is getting married, making more money than you do, and paying off their student loans, Sam's poetry captures the voice of millennials everywhere who know that being in your 20s can sometimes be the exact opposite of "the best years of your life."

    Brought together one sweltering afternoon to stand guard over an ammunition dump threatened by a forest fire, they discover in each other an unexpected capacity for recklessness and violence. Far from being alarmed by this discovery, they are exhilarated by it; they emerge from their common danger full of confidence in their own manhood and in the bond of friendship they have formed.This confidence is shaken when a series of thefts occur. The author embraces the perspectives of both the betrayer and the betrayed, forcing us to participate in lives that we might otherwise condemn, and to recognize the kinship of those lives to our own.

    This book was created with hopes of uplifting and encouraging readers in many ways. There is a journal in the back of the book for readers and fellow writers to indulge in to keep the "conversation" going. Author, Alexandra Elle, wrote this book to shed light on the fact that indeed not all who wander are lost; some are simply still finding their way.

    Containing more than fifty new poems and a generous gathering from his collections of the past decade-Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, and Nine Horses-Aimless Love showcases the best of his poetic maneuvers: the everyday ends in the infinite, playfulness is paired with empathy, irony gives way to wonder. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.

    It is a book that understands and justifies the melancholy in love. Yet amidst this hurt, it still acknowledges love as a good thing, if only we could find it, give it, and take it the right way.“Broken Wishbones & Empty Spaces” heals a reader simply by acknowledgment. It skillfully teaches how to gracefully bear love’s forlorn.Pyrokardia's second collection of poetry couldn’t have been written in a better way and it is a perfect comrade and companion to his first collection titled “A Beautiful Mess”.

    Ken, the publisher, here. I couldn't be more thrilled to make this book flesh. This collection of aphorisms concise, eloquent truths contains so much poetry and passion and deep thinking, I've been caught by single pages for hours. This book is sharp, funny, tragic, irreverent, wise. All beauty. It puts fire in me. I invite you to enjoy that fire, too."

    Eliot Prize 2018One of Bustle's 12 Most Anticipated Poetry Collections for 2018Hannah Sullivan’s debut collection is a revelation – three long poems of fresh ambition, intensity, and substance. Though each poem stands apart, their inventive and looping encounters make for a compelling unity. "You, Very Young in New York" captures a great American city, in all its alluring detail. It is a wry and tender study of romantic possibility, disappointment, and the obduracy of innocence. "Repeat until Time" begins with a move to California and unfolds into an essay on repetition and returning home, at once personal and philosophical. "The Sandpit after Rain" explores the birth of a child and the loss of a father with exacting clarity. In Three Poems, readers will experience Sullivan's work with the same exhilaration as they might the great modernizing poems of Eliot and Pound, but with the unique perspective of a brilliant new female voice.