Widely considered to be among his best works, ‘War Stories’ is a collection of poems detailing Nemerov’s observations and personal experiences of the Second World War. From the grand, sweeping reflections of ‘The War in the Heavens’ to the haunting verses of ‘The War in the Streets,’ this anthology is as pertinent now as it was when it was first published. A superb book for those with an interest in World War II, or those who want to see a different side to this usually-satirical poet. Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991) was an American novelist and poet, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978. His novels are characterised by the use of self-deprecating wit and an ongoing sense of irony. While his books tended to satirise 20th Century American life, his poems often focussed on the beauty and innocence of nature. In addition, Nemerov also worked as a scriptwriter, most notably on the film, ‘Tall Story,’ starring Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda.

A new book of poetry from internationally acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author Margaret Atwood In Dearly, Margaret Atwood’s first collection of poetry in over a decade, Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature and - zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived. While many are familiar with Margaret Atwood’s fiction—including her groundbreaking and bestselling novels The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, among others—she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of our most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry. This collection is a stunning achievement that will be appreciated by fans of her novels and poetry readers alike.

An impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers, by critically acclaimed poet Matthew Zapruder In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with it. Zapruder explores what poems are, and how we can read them, so that we can, as Whitman wrote, “possess the origin of all poems,” without the aid of any teacher or expert. Most important, he asks how reading poetry can help us to lead our lives with greater meaning and purpose. Anchored in poetic analysis and steered through Zapruder’s personal experience of coming to the form, Why Poetry is engaging and conversational, even as it makes a passionate argument for the necessity of poetry in an age when information is constantly being mistaken for knowledge. While he provides a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminates concepts like associative movement, metaphor, and negative capability, Zapruder explicitly confronts the obstacles that readers face when they encounter poetry to show us that poetry can be read, and enjoyed, by anyone.

This important and inspiring collection is a sweeping overview of poetry written in New York in the year after the 9/11 attacks . . . This anthology contains poems by forty-five of the most important poets of the day, as well as some of the literary world’s most dynamic young voices, all writing in New York City in the year immediately following the World Trade Center attacks. It was inspired by the editors' observation that after the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, poetry was being posted everywhere in New York—on telephone poles, on warehouse walls, on bus shelters, in the letters-to-the-editor section of newspapers ... New Yorkers spontaneously turned to poetry to understand and cope with the tragedy of the attack. Full of humor, love, rage and fear, this diverse collection of poems attests to that power of poetry to express and to heal the human spirit. Featuring poems by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn; Best American Poetry series editor David Lehman; National Book Award winner and New York State Poet Jean Valentine; the first ever Nuyorican Slam-Poetry champ; poets laureate of Brooklyn and Queens; and a poem and introduction by National Book Award finalist Alicia Ostriker.

A masterful new collection of poetry from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize The poems in Carl Dennis’s thirteenth collection, Night School, are informed by an engagement with a world not fully accessible to the light of day, a world that can only be known with help from the imagination, whether we focus on ourselves, on people close at hand, or on the larger society. Only if we imagine alternatives to our present selves, Dennis suggests, can we begin to grasp who we are. Only if we imagine what is hidden from us about the lives of others can those lives begin to seem whole. Only if we can conceive of a social world different from the one we seem to inhabit can we begin to make sense of the country we call our own. To read these poems is to find ourselves invited into a dialogue between what is present and what is absent that proves surprising and enlarging.