The Girl Aquarium (2019)

A Portable Paradise

Roger Robinson

2020 · 84 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

A portrait of the artist as Filipino

Nick Joaquin

1966 · 122 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

A Shropshire lad

A.E. Housman

1896 · 95 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

First published in 1896, this is Housman's first and most widely known collection of poems. Dismal and fatalistic, Housman speaks of the cruelty of life. In contrast to the dreary subject matter, the poetry itself is brisk and lively. Considered by many to be among the finest works of modern British poetry.

Aurora Leigh

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1999 · 376 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

Bone

Yrsa Daley-Ward

2014 · 151 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

"From the celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, a poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark. The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence--so clear and pared-down, they become universal. From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society's expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward's bone resonate to the core of what it means to be human."--

Don't Call Us Dead

Danez Smith

2017 · 104 pages · 2 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality--the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood--and a diagnosis of HIV positive. Some of us are killed / in pieces, Smith writes, some of us all at once. Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--Dear White America--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.