Poetry

The magnificent Seventeenth-Century metaphysical poet John Donne created new forms of lyric, satire, erotic poems, and religious verse that left poetry in English forever changed. From his famously sensual love poems to his equally passionate and powerful Holy Sonnets, Donne's forceful language and ingenious wit encompass a remarkable range of tones.

His poetry reflects every stage of his personal development, from the piratical Jack Donne who sailed with Sir Walter Ralegh against the Spaniards and spent riotous nights in the London streets, to the penitent John Donne who became Dean of St. Paul's and the most celebrated preacher of his age. His independence of view, compact manner of expressing conflicting moods, impassioned paradoxes, and outbreakes of cynicism and wry humor make his work particularly appealing to modern readers.

This edition, compiled and introduced by C. A. Patrides, is recognized as the most complete and scholarly one-volume collection of Donne's Complete English Poems available.

Introduction by C. A. Patrides

The selected early poems by Mark Doty including the complete texts of Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight for which Mr. Doty has contributed a new introduction.

In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America's, and the world's, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls' night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali's conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history's grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives.

Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine's Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book's final section, "Little Book of Woe," which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness.

At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you'll hear in return is "a lifetime of song."

Doug says: Not every book chosen for the store's poetry book club is a favorite. They are all good in their own way. But Dove's Playlist is the best I've read since its release in 2021. This poet speaks to me, and stirs my response. Perhaps her poems will resonate with you, too.

Hailed as "indispensable" (David Wojahn), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn masterfully shifts between the metaphysical and the ironic, never wavering in his essential honesty. His graceful poems confront our contradictions with tenderness and wit, enliven the ordinary with penetrating observation, and alert us to the haunting wonders and relationships that surround us.

The Not Yet Fallen World draws from all nineteen of Stephen Dunn's crystalline volumes, including his most recent, Pagan Virtues (2019); the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Loosestrife (1996); and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours (2000). By turns sardonic and profound, Dunn examines the disguises we don to hide from ourselves and reveals sublime beauty hidden within seemingly mundane interactions. Nine new poems extend the poet's inquiry into the paradoxes of contemporary life; as he writes in "Love Poem Near the End of the World," "Something keeps me holding on / to a future I didn't think possible."

Arranged to further Dunn's signature themes--mortality, morality, and the roles we play in the essential human comedy of getting through each day--this final collection captures the breadth of an acclaimed poet's achievement. His legacy is a poetic expanse suffused with fearless generosity and perceptive wisdom.