I’m dedicating August to reading poetry everyday. What are your favorite poetry books?

Question

Catherine Davis · Answer

The Haiku Year: Seven friends (including Michael Stype, Douglas A. Martin, and Grant Lee Phillips) make a pact to write a haiku a day as a way to keep in touch. Captures everyday moments from the exquisite to the mundane. Profane, funny, sad, and so much unexpected beauty.

patio furniture

where we laughed

now covered in snow

Bianca · Answer

Space Struck by Paige Lewis: Brainy and beautiful. I got this in either 2019 or 2020, and I love to revisit these poems every now and then.

elaine · Answer

i be but i ain’t by aziza barnes: aziza is out of this world.

Seneca · Answer

Ross Gay's "Be Holding": It's basically one long poem. If you know anything about Basketball or the Sixers / Julius Erving this is essential reading. But I have limited NBA familiarity and I still was deeply affected by this one. I'm a big fan of anything Ross Gay writes.

Myles M · Answer

i must be living twice by eileen myles: and really anything you can get your hands on by trans poet Eileen Myles. their work has been so seismically important in my life and my writing practice that i named myself after them :)

Meg · Answer

Mindy Nettifee (2025): Mindy’s poetry is deepest sea deep, honest, irreverent, and effervescent in the most feral way. Read and be changed for the fiercer.

Ellen · Answer

100 Poems by Seamus Heaney: beautiful, great for reading out loud. He has such an obvious love of language that sometimes it takes until the last line to realize you've been thoroughly gutted.

Kirklander · Answer

Love is a Dog From Hell (Charles Bukowski): Or any poem by Charles bukowski really

bandy ✨ · Answer

may swenson poetry: “the beam” has changed my life daily for years now

Maribeth · Answer

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo: From the 23rd US Poet Laureate, and the first Native American to hold that honor, Joy Harjo is a national treasure.

Here’s a beautiful one from the book, transcribed from The Poetry Foundation.

Granddaughters

I was a thought, a dream, a fish, a wing

And then a human being

When I emerged from my mother's river

On my father's boat of potent fever

I carried a sack of dreams from a starlit dwelling

To be opened when I begin bleeding

There's a red dress, deerskin moccasins

The taste of berries made of promises

While the memories shift in their skins

At every moon, to do their ripening

coy · Answer

Before the Next Bomb Drops by Remi Kanazi: this collection of poems written in 2015 is heart wrenching and provides a solid account of why Palestinian liberation needs to be centered in all our movements.

Steve M · Answer

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson): My strong recommendation is to read Emily Dickinson in print form; Modern reprintings will preserve her punctuation and stylistic flourishes better than most online texts. Hauntingly beautiful.

Lindsey Millikan · Answer

Take Me With You (Andrea Gibson): A true treasure. I saw them perform live in SF several years back. They had the audience in tears multiple times. Such powerful work. I was able to get a signed copy of this one for my partner.

Lindsey · Answer

Devotions by Mary Oliver: Simply the best and perfect for the soul.

Monique · Answer

This Wound Is A World - Billy-Ray Belcourt: One of my favourite reads of this summer. Playful, form-defying, intense.

Monique · Answer

Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson: Anne Carson is the goat, her work is both sad and bittersweet while also being hopeful and playful. In this summer of Greek myth adaptations, read Carson. Her story of Geryon the little boy dragon is just heartachey in the best way. My favourite book of all time.

Monique · Answer

Liz Howard, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent: Affecting and frenzied in the best way.

Liz S C · Answer

Lucille Clifton how to carry water: This book is etched in my soul. I find Clifton‘s poetry, deeply relatable as a woman, mother, and daughter. Simultaneously, as a white woman she gave me an intimate window into the story of being a Black woman in America. gorgeous.

Natali · Answer

Revolutionary Letters: opens with revolutionary letter #1 “I have just realized that the stakes are myself”.

diane forever!

Julia Dionne · Answer

Anything by Ada Limon!

Ali D · Answer

Kate Baer: Any of Kate Baers books! Her observations about life and motherhood are so insightful and leave a lasting impression.

Katherine · Answer

Poetry Changes Lives: This is a book by the wonderful Christopher Burn. He highlights both famous and lesser-known poetry, and also provides historical contexts, analyses and personal reflections of the works. If you'd rather hear spoken poetry, he also has social media @burnpoet. I highly recommend!

Haley James · Answer

Night Sky with Exit Wounds — Ocean Vuong: The first time I read Ocean Vuong's writing, specifically his poem On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (he has a novel by the same name), a window opened in a corner of my brain I did not realize had been closed — language could be used like this (like anyway we want it to, of course!?). There is a before experiencing Ocean Vuong and an after. This book contains that poem and is a collection I regularly return to.

KG · Answer

Dream Delivery Service by Matthias Svalina: Poems, but they are dreams for you and your loved ones

KG · Answer

Making Water by Laura Jaramillo: moves between the intimate and the political without flattening either one. Bodies, desire, history, and the natural world bleed into one another. It’s strange and sensual and intellectually restless

KG · Answer

Self portrait in a convex mirror by John Ashbery: Experience of self can be multiple, and shifting. The distortion that comes along with trying to see your self isn’t something you have to see past, it’s part of the truth of seeing it.

Nitabel · Answer

Twigs and Knucklebones (Sarah Lindsay): Top-tier nerd poetry from a poet who is also a paleontologist. It opens with a poem about the discovery of the skull of the first species of hominid who may have had the capacity for speech. If you’re awed by the beauty, complexity, and specificity of nature, this writer is for you. Plus there’s a very horny poem about getting fucked by a t-rex.

Heather M · Answer

What We Carry by Dorianne Laux: Her poems are wry and relatable, accessible but still deep and complex, and she is a charismatic, funny presence herself. Really any book by her, but for an easy place to dive in, I recommend the poem “Balance”. She reminds me how much I love poetry.

Heather M · Answer

What the Living Do by Marie Howe: The title poem! I recommend this poem so often.

Ashlie · Answer

kate baer

Elena · Answer

Devotions by Mary Oliver: The Mary Oliver of all Mary Olivers! Essential to your collection

Em · Answer

Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver: A poem I like coming back to whenever I need a reminder that one must find joy in life, spark joy in others and create an abundance of joy. It can be a powerful thing!

flat · Answer

the country of marriage: wendell berry is a farmer, author, environmentalist, and much more

this is probably my favorite small collection of his, and, perhaps most notably, it continues his collection of "mad farmer" poems

Megan · Answer

Instructions For Traveling West: The perfect poetry collection for August wanderings and seasons of reinvention

Lyla · Answer

musee des beaux arts: The most beautiful poem in the world.

travis duong · Answer

Crush by Richard Siken: raw and confessional takes on love and obsession. been reading a few poems before bed from this collection.