Book picks similar to
It Shouldn't Have Been Beautiful (Poets, Penguin) by Lia Purpura
poetry
non-fiction
f-poetry
floetry
Bullets Into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence
Brian Clements - 2017
A powerful call to end American gun violence from celebrated poets and those most impacted, including a foreword by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly and an introduction by Colum McCann, published on the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting.Focused intensively on the crisis of gun violence in America, this volume brings together poems by dozens of our best-known poets, including Billy Collins, Patricia Smith, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, Natalie Diaz, Martin Espada, Robert Hass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, Brenda Hillman, Natasha Threthewey and Juan Felipe Herrera.Each poem is followed by a response from a gun violence prevention activist, political figure, survivor, or concerned individual, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams, Senator Christopher Murphy, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, survivors of the Columbine, Sandy Hook, Charleston Emmanuel AME, and Virginia Tech shootings, and Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir, and Lucy McBath, mother of Jordan Davis.The result is a stunning collection of poems and prose that speak directly to the heart; a persuasive and moving testament to the urgent need for gun control.
If They Come for Us
Fatimah Asghar - 2018
After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with coming-of-age as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back. Asghar's poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity. Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.
Our Numbered Days
Neil Hilborn - 2015
To date, it has been watched over 10 million times. Our Numbered Days is Neil’s debut full-length poetry collection, containing 45 of Neil’s poems including “OCD”, “Joey”, “Future Tense”, “Liminality”, “Moving Day”, and many, many never-before-seen poems.
Dear Me At Fifteen
Jennae Cecelia - 2018
Dear Me At Fifteen is half poetry book and half self-expression journal. It is to not only inspire you to be the best version of yourself today and in the future, but for you to reflect on all the growth you have made. This book is meant for you to dig deep into yourself and answer questions you don’t always take the time to think about.
Beaten and Left for Dead: The Story of Teri Jendusa-Nicolai
Dave Alfvin - 2017
The Crime of the Decade in Wisconsin. WITH PHOTOS Teri Jendusa never dreamed she would marry a violent, malignant narcissist like David Larsen. But she did. Why? Simple. Larsen cleverly concealed his true nature until the marriage vows were final. David, an eventual church council president and model citizen, rapidly began to morph into a monster and sociopath, telling Teri on their wedding day, “Now, I own you.” Beaten and Left For Dead is a book about extreme marital violence, dominant control and psychological torment through the mind of the out-of-control David Larsen. It's also about survival, faith and a mother’s will to live for her children’s sake...as she faces death, face to face. This is an ideal book for women’s studies and book clubs as it looks inside a large women’s shelter, giving the reader a glimpse of a support network. The author also interviews a counselor who works with violent men with surprising results. Teri Jendusa-Nicolai continues to crusade for women’s issues to this day and currently works with a Wisconsin commission on domestic violence. EDITORIAL PRAISE "Teri Jendusa-Nicolai's story is a powerful example of the horrific lengths of barbarism a man can go to when he considers a woman his personal property. And it is, equally, an inspiring, riveting story of a woman's courage and clear thinking under the absolute worst of conditions, and of her tenacious hold to life...I am so grateful to Teri Jendusa-Nicolai and to Dave Alfvin for getting this story out to us. Don't miss it." --Lundy Bancroft, best-selling author on domestic violence, trainer, and activist on male violence against women "This book is important because it gets our message out as to what we do to help abusers change their value systems." --Maureen Manning-Rosenfeld, Clinical Professional Counselor
Come, Thief
Jane Hirshfield - 2011
Hirshfield is unsurpassed in her ability to sink into a moment’s essence and exchange something of herself with its finite music—and then, in seemingly simple, inevitable words, to deliver that exchange to us in poems that vibrate with form and expression perfectly united. Hirshfield’s poems of discovery, acknowledgment of the difficult, and praise turn always toward deepening comprehension. Here we encounter the stealth of feeling’s arrival (“as some strings, untouched, / sound when a near one is speaking. / So it was when love slipped inside us”), an anatomy of solitude (“wrong solitude vinegars the soul, / right solitude oils it”), a reflection on perishability and the sweetness its acceptance invites into our midst (“How suddenly then / the strange happiness took me, / like a man with strong hands and strong mouth”), and a muscular, unblindfolded awareness of our shared political and planetary fate. To read these startlingly true poems is to find our own feelings eloquently ensnared. Whether delving into intimately familiar moments or bringing forward some experience until now outside words, Hirshfield finds for each face of our lives its metamorphosing portrait, its particular, memorable, singing and singular name. Love in AugustWhite mothsagainst the screenin August darkness.Some clamor in envy.Some spread largeas two handsof a thiefwho wants to put back in your cupboardthe long-taken silver.
Rotten Perfect Mouth
Eva H.D. - 2015
These poems are loose enough for the reader to flop down inside and stay awhile. They are plangent, personal, confessional, noisy, nostalgic, and maybe a little bit broken. They often contain boats and travel and Toronto (street names and railroad tracks, dives and parks and kitchens) because those are the sorts of things Eva H.D. is drawn to. In Rotten Perfect Mouth, readers will discover a writer with her heart on her sleeve and her hand on her pen, capturing the world around her with vibrant immediacy.