Poetry: Home

How do you define yourself? By your friends? Your family? Your boyfriend? Your grades? Your trophies? Your choices? By a single choice? This novel in verse portrays the story of a young woman and the aftermath of a life-altering decision. Fans of Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins will find the powerful questions, the difficult truths, and the inner strength that speaks to them in Ask Me How I Got Here.

Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina -- she's fearless. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul -- her life.

eBook available. 2015 Newbery Medal Winner 2015 Coretta Scott King Honor Award Winner New York Times "With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I'm delivering," announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood from Kwame Alexander.

The freedom to roam is something that women and girls in Cuba do not have. Yet when Fredrika Bremer visits from Sweden in 1851 to learn about the people of this magical island, she is accompanied by Cecilia, a young slave who longs for her lost home in Africa. Soon Elena, the wealthy daughter of the house, sneaks out to join them. As the three women explore the lush countryside, they form a bond that breaks the barriers of language and culture.

Our story. Our way. A poet An artist One black One white Two voices One journey

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

Daisy Meehan has always been good- a good sister, helping uncomplainingly with her severely autistic brother, Steven; a good daughter, playing the third parent in her fraught household; a good musician, winning accolades for her trumpet playing; a good student; a good friend. But when her parents make a major decision about Steven that will break their family in two, Daisy decides it's time to stop helping, stop trying, stop tiptoeing, stop ignoring her crush on slacker Dave . . . and start being bad.

Teenage boys speak out—without the filter of adult sensibility—in a compelling collection of poetry and prose. In a powerful collection of more than seventy uncensored poems and essays, more than fifty teenage boys from across the country explore their many-layered concerns: identity, love, envy, gratitude, sex, anger, competition, fear, hope. Here, unadorned and without the filter of adult sensibility, is the raw stuff of their lives, in their own words. Isn’t it time to listen?

A celebration of girls and women in a three part poetry collection that is powerful, hopeful, authentic, and universal.

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins. With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.

On a bleak February day in 1963 a young American poet died by her own hand, and passed into a myth that has since imprinted itself on the hearts and minds of millions. She was and is Sylvia Plath and Your Own, Sylvia is a portrait of her life, told in poems. With photos and an extensive list of facts and sources to round out the reading experience, Your Own, Sylvia is a great curriculum companion to Plath's The Bell Jar and Ariel, a welcoming introduction for newcomers, and an unflinching valentine for the devoted.

"Tell me how to live so many lives at once ..." Fowzi, who beats everyone at dominoes; Ibtisam, who wanted to be a doctor; Abu Mahmoud, who knows every eggplant and peach in his West Bank garden; mysterious Uncle Mohammed, who moved to the mountain; a girl in a red sweater dangling a book bag; children in velvet dresses who haunt the candy bowl at the party; Baba Kamalyari, age 71; Mr. Dajani and his swans; Sitti Khadra, who never lost her peace inside. Maybe they have something to tell us. Naomi Shihab Nye has been writing about being Arab-American, about Jerusalem, about the West Bank, about family all her life. These new and collected poems of the Middle East -- sixty in all -- appear together here for the first time.

From its earliest days to today, poetry has always been a spoken art. On the page and out loud, poetry is the home for the brilliant, the rebellious, the artists and performers who are changing the world. Today's spoken word revolution is the literary equivalent to grabbing a culture by the collar and shaking it...hard. In the tradition of The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux brings more of the gripping, moving, innovative, often hilarious poetry in the oral tradition. This redefining collection gathers multiple forms of "spoken word" under the same motley tent-slam, hip-hop, musical interpretations, and youth movements among them. The resulting brew is both satisfying and world-expanding. One audio CD features some of the best poems and poets, immediately live in their own electrifying words and voices. The Spoken Word Revolution Redux includes: --Singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley --Slam Poetry founder Marc Smith --Ethan Hawke reading Beat Poet Gregory Corso --Jazz pianist Patricia Barber adapting ee cummings --Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Bill Collins and Mark Strand --Four-time national poetry slam champion Patricia Smith --Jeff Tweedy of Wilco --Hip-Hop founder Gil Scott-Heron --Indy National Poetry Slam Champions, including Mayda da Ville --Viggo Mortensen and Hank Mortensen --Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins

They are inspiring talented stunning remarkable wise They are also fearless depressed hilarious impatient in love out of love pissed off And they want you to let them in.

This landmark anthology, part of a series that will eventually cover the entire century, gathers nearly 1500 poems by over 200 poets to restore American poetry's most brilliant era in all its beauty, explosive energy, and extraordinary diversity. Included are generous selections of the century's great poets -- Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes; and undervalued poets like Witter Bynner, Mina Loy, Louis Zukofsky, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Robert Johnson; and a wealth of talented and overlooked poets, experimentalists, formal innovators, popular and humorous versifiers, poets of social protest, and accomplished songwriters.

This landmark anthology, part of a series that will eventually cover the entire century, gathers nearly 1500 poems by over 200 poets to restore American poetry's most brilliant era in all its beauty, explosive energy, and extraordinary diversity. Included are generous selections of the century's great poets -- Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes; and undervalued poets like Witter Bynner, Mina Loy, Louis Zukofsky, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Robert Johnson; and a wealth of talented and overlooked poets, experimentalists, formal innovators, popular and humorous versifiers, poets of social protest, and accomplished songwriters.

For over two centuries, black poets have created verse that captures the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their variety of visions and styles, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry aims to offer nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people. Poems are grouped as meditations on key issues in black culture, including the idea of Africa; the South; slavery; protest and resistance; the black man, woman, and child; sexuality and love; music and religion; spirituality; death and transcendence. With their often starkly contrasting visions and styles, these poets illuminate some of the more controversial and intimate aspects of the black American experience.

This is the only comprehensive volume of Robert Frost's published verse; in it are the contents of all eleven of his individual books of poetry-from A Boy's Will (1913) to In the Clearing (1962). The editor, Edward Connery Lathem, has scrupulously annotated the more than 350 poems in this book.

Maya Angelou, the bestselling author of On the Pulse of Morning, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, and other lavishly praised works, is considered one of America's finest poets. Here, four of her most highly acclaimed poems are assembled in a beautiful gift edition that provides a feast for the eyes as well as the heart. (Poetry)

Verse and drama have provided outlets for emotive expression and the creative impulse for centuries. Poignant, inspiring, and thought-provoking, plays and poems spoken or written in any language help reinterpret reality and evoke some of humanitys most profound truths. The terms culled in this volume describe many of the most potent elements of languagethose that venture beyond the realm of prose and invoke the power of cadence, lyricism, and drama to recount all aspects of the human condition.

Flexible enough for any poetry course, this text is designed to make your students lifelong lovers of poetry. It combines classic poetry with today’s hippest verse, mixing in delicious portions of contemporary life, humor, and universal themes. In-depth chapters on authors such as Emily Dickinson and Billy Collins reveal the real-life contexts in which poets create. There is also plenty of support for students — with thorough chapters on the poetic elements, six sensible chapters on critical reading and writing, and many helpful sample close readings, writing assignments, and student papers.

Focusing on the intersection of literature and politics since the beginning of the 20th century, this book examines authors, historical figures, major literary and political works, national literatures, and literary movements to reveal the intrinsic links between literature and history. * Covers numerous authors from around the world ranging from the beginning of the 20th century to the modern era * Enables students to better understand literary works central to the curriculum by considering them in their political contexts * Helps readers to use literature in order to learn about modern political and social issues across cultures and better appreciate the political significance of contemporary writings * Contains a number of "gateway" entries that survey entire national literatures, thereby giving readers an introduction to the authors who are important within those literatures * Assists students in evaluating rhetorical strategies and political views, thus fostering critical thinking in support of the Common Core State Standards