Carl Phillips has aptly described his work as an "ongoing quest"; Then the War is the next step in that meaningful process of self-discovery for both the poet and his reader. The new poems, written in a time of rising racial conflict in the United States, with its attendant violence and uncertainty, find Phillips entering deeper into the landscape he has made his own: a forest of intimacy, queerness, and moral inquiry, where the farther we go, the...

Auguries of Innocence is the first book of poetry from Patti Smith in more than a decade. It marks a major accomplishment from a poet and performer who has inscribed her vision of our world in powerful anthems, ballads, and lyrics. In this intimate and searing collection of poems, Smith joins in that great tradition of troubadours, journeymen, wordsmiths, and artists who respond to the world around them in fresh and original language. Her influences...

A powerful collection from one of our most gifted and widely read poets- 117 of her finest poems drawn from her seven published volumes. Michael Ondaatje has called Sharon Olds' s poetry " pure fire in the hands" and cheered the " roughness and humor and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss." This rich selection exhibits those qualities in poem after poem, reflecting, moreover,...

"The prize-winning poet brings her craft to a new level, turning her lyric lens on the worlds within worlds we inhabit, and how we navigate our shared predicament. Here is the poet who "bartered forty summers for black pearls," whose work is full of such wagers, embodied in playing cards, treble notes, snow globes, the tables of our lives on which is strewn the news of the day: the president speaking to the parishioners in Charleston, the ricochet...

"For over fifty years, Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his brilliant and innovative poetic imagery, his sardonic wit, and a voice all his own. He has been awarded nearly every major literary prize for his poetry, including a Pulitzer and a MacArthur grant, in addition to serving as the poet laureate of the United States in 2007 and 2008. In this new volume, he distills his life's work, combining for the first time the best of his early...

Collects poems that explore memory, relationships, time, and the natural world.