Black text on white background that reads "Discovery Lists." On the image, there is a black film reel in the upper left-hand corner. On the bottom right hand corner, there is a music staff with music notes on it. Between the words "Discovery" and "Lists" there is a black and white sketch of an opened book with flowers growing out of it.

Celebrating National Poetry Month: A Discovery List

National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996 to celebrate the integral role of poets and poetry in our culture. One of the ways we are celebrating National Poetry Month at the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers is through this discovery list of our favorite poetry collections and poems.…

Poetry Recommendation: Joanna Klink

Raptus “Everywhere, a forceful, scrupulous intelligence is active- a luminous diction, a range of cadences.” So has Mark Strand written of the work of Joanna Klink, who has won acclaim for elegant, sensual, and musical poems that “remain alert to the reparations of beauty and song” (Dean Young). The linked poems in Klink’s third collection, Raptus,…

Poetry Pairing: Joseph Brodsky

Collected Poems in English – Joseph Brodsky “One of the greatest and grandest advocates of the literary vocation, Joseph Brodsky truly lived his life as a poet, and for it earned eighteen months in an Arctic labor camp, expulsion from his native country, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Such were one man’s wages. Here,…

Poetry Recommendation: Virgin – Analicia Sotelo

“Selected by Ross Gay as winner of the inaugural Jake Adam York Prize, Analicia Sotelo’s debut collection of poems is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman. In Virgin, Sotelo walks the line between autobiography and mythmaking, offering up identities like dishes at a feast. These poems devour and complicate tropes of femininity―of…

Poetry Pairing: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Collected Poems – Edna St. Vincent Millay’ “Alongside Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings, Millay remains among the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century for her uniquely lyrical explorations of love, individuality, and artistic expression. This invaluable compendium of her work is not only an essential addition to any…

Poetry Recommendation: Life on Mars – Tracy K. Smith

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize * Poet Laureate of the United States * * A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice * * A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * “With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to…

Poetry Pairing: Thom Gunn

Selected Poems – Thom Gunn “Thom Gunn was an Elizabethan poet in modern guise, though there’s nothing archaic, quaint, or sepia-toned about his poetry. His method was dispassionate and rigorous, uniquely well suited for making a poetic record of the tumultuous time in which he lived. Gunn’s dozens of brilliantly realized poems about nature, friendship,…

Poetry Pairing: Elizabeth Bishop

Poems – Elizabeth Bishop “Elizabeth Bishop is one of America’s greatest writers, and her art is loved and admired by readers and fellow poets alike. The poems that make up Bishop’s small and select body of work display honesty and humor, grief and acceptance, observing nature and human nature with painstaking accuracy. Her poems often…

A Few Favorite Poetry Collections

National Poetry Month is drawing to a close, but there are many more days left in the year to appreciate and celebrate poetry. Here are two collections that I’ve recently read and thought were knockouts: Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds “In his haunting and fearless debut, Ocean Vuong walks a tightrope of historic…

Happy National Poetry Month!

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’ve put together a reading list based on the works and lives of New England poets. It’s by no means an exhaustive list; the majority of the poets included here are practically household names (I’m looking at you, Robert Frost. You too, Emily Dickinson). You’ll find below: biographies, letters, fictionalized…

Outlaw Style – R.T. Smith

Smith combines a strong line and a knack for historical narrative to deliver a compelling collection of poetry. His poetic journey takes him deep into the South where he looks back at history and tries to answer the question – why? Some of the poems are downright haunting and they have a tendency to dwell…

Portraits of Beauty: Poems ~ Jason Kirkey

Reviewing poetry isn’t an easy endeavor; it’s such a subjective creative field, moreso even then fiction, and whether you respond to a particular collection or poem relies entirely on the life you have lived. At the very least I’ve always found that to be true. The beauty found in Kirkey’s collection is of the best…