James P. Adams Library: National Poetry Month: America's Poet Laureate 2017-2019

America's Poet Laureate 2017 - 2019

“I see the poet as someone who has made a commitment not just to self-expression, but to an active and an eager listening to the world and the voices outside of the self.”

“My hope is to create spaces where people of all stripes can come together and speak at a lower decibel level,” she says. “We make more sense that way. We sound more like our real selves that way. We are struggling to understand each other, and that’s work we need to settle into for the long haul. We all belong in the mess here together, and we can determine whether and how it gets sorted out.”

Tracy K. Smith is the author of the memoir Ordinary Light and four books of poetry: Wade in the Water, forthcoming April 2018; Life on Mars, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, recipient of the 2006 James Laughlin Award; and The Body's Question, which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith is also the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award and a Whiting Award. She was the Literature protégé in the 2009-2011 cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. In June 2017 she was named the 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Library of Congress, and in March 2018 she was re-appointed to a second term for 2018-19.

National Poetry Month 2018 Exhibit

To celebrate National Poetry Month 2018, we are showcasing 21st-century poets and their work. Just a few of these exciting new titles are listed below. Stop by to see the full exhibit for even more!

American Sublime by Elizabeth Alexander
A brilliant new collection by Elizabeth Alexander, whose "poems bristle with the irresistible quality of a world seen fresh" (Rita Dove,The Washington Post) In her fourth remarkable collection, Elizabeth Alexander voices the outcries, dreams, and histories of an African American tradition that goes back to the slave rebellion on the Amistad and to the artists' canvases of nineteenth-century America. In persona poems, historical narratives, jazz riffs, sonnets, elegies, and a sequence of ars poetica,American Sublime is Alexander's most vivid and varied collection and affirms her place as one of America's most lively and gifted writers. "Alexander is an unusual thing, a sensualist of history, a romanticist of race. She weaves biography, history, experience, pop culture and dream. Her poems make the public and private dance together." --Chicago Tribune
Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation by Victoria M. Chang (Editor); Marilyn Chin (Foreword by)
This exciting anthology of work by up-and-coming writers is the first to profile a new generation of Asian American poets. A foreword by Marilyn Chin puts the book in context of both Asian American national identity and history, and makes the important distinctions between generations clear. Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation opens the door on a dynamic, developing part of the poetic world, making it finally accessible to students, scholars, and poetry fans alike.
The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry by Michael Simms (Editor); Giuliana Certo (Editor); Christine Stroud (Editor)
A comprehensive selection of work by 110 important American poets including Kim Addonizio, Jimmy Santiago Baca, George Bilgere, Chana Bloch, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Toi Derricotte, Stephen Dobyns, Rita Dove, Denise Duhamel, Stephen Dunn, Terrance Hayes, Bob Hicok, Jane Hirshfield, Tony Hoagland, Marie Howe, Joy Katz, Jane Kenyon, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Larry Levis, William Matthews, Jeffery McDaniel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ed Ochester, Linda Pastan, and Natasha Tretheway.
The Body's Question by Tracy K. Smith; Kevin Young
Recipient of the the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry prize for the best first book by an African American poet, The Body's Question confronts issues of loss, historical intersections between race and family and the threshold between childhood and adulthood.
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
In this brilliant collection of new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant and revisits kitschy concepts like 'love' and 'illness', now relegated to the museum of obsolescence. With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe, accompanying the discoveries, failures and oddities of human existence and establishing Smith as one of the best poets of her generation.
The New Census by Kevin A. Gonzalez (Editor); Lauren Shapiro (Editor)
THE NEW CENSUS captures the kaleidoscopic range of contemporary poetry, spanning a complex array of aesthetic, formal, and social concerns. It includes over one hundred poems from forty poets: Carrie Olivia Adams, Eric Baus, John Beer, Nicky Beer, Ciaran Berry, Jericho Brown, Suzanne Buffam, Heather Christle, Eduardo C. Corral, Kyle Dargan, Darcie Dennigan, Sandra Doller, Timothy Donnelly, Joshua Edwards, Emily Kendal Frey, Dobby Gibson, Yona Harvey, Steve Healey, Tyehimba Jess, Keetje Kuipers, Nick Lantz, Dorothea Lasky, Dora Malech, Sarah Manguso, Randall Mann, Sabrina Orah Mark, Chris Martin, J. Michael Martinez, Adrian Matejka, John Murillo, Sawako Nakayasu, Kathleen Ossip, Kiki Petrosino, Zach Savich, Robyn Schiff, James Shea, Nick Twemlow, Sarah Vap, Jerry Williams, and Jon Woodward. Alongside the work of these forty bright stars, THE NEW CENSUS features twenty census polls of its poets as well as dynamic illustrations by artist Lauren Haldeman.
Of Poetry and Protest by Phil Cushway; Michael Warr; Victoria Smith
Included in this extraordinary volume are the poems of 43 of America's most talented African American wordsmiths, including Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Rita Dove, Natasha Tretheway, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith, as well as the work of other luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. The anthology also contains personal essays on race such as "The Talk" by Jeannine Amber and works by Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, and The Reverend Dr. William Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement, as well as images and iconic political posters of the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. Taken together, Of Poetry and Protest gives voice to the current conversation about race in America while also providing historical and cultural context. It serves as an excellent introduction to African American poetry and is a must-have for every reader committed to social justice and racial harmony.
Poetry 180 by Billy Collins (Editor, Introduction by)
A dazzling new anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by America's Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. Inspired by Billy Collins's poem-a-day program with the Library of Congress, Poetry 180 is the perfect anthology for readers who appreciate engaging, thoughtful poems that are an immediate pleasure. A 180-degree turn implies a turning back--in this case, to poetry. A collection of 180 poems by the most exciting poets at work today, Poetry 180 represents the richness and diversity of the form, and is designed to beckon readers with a selection of poems that are impossible not to love at first glance.
Velvet Be-Bop Kente Cloth by Sterling Plumpp
Presents a collection - third in a trilogy of poetics works that Sterling Plumpp has created to allow audiences to explore the language of music articulated through the nuances of jazz, blues and bebop. The poetry utilises distinct rhythms and a non-conventional use of line and line breaks.
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier
Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. "I am," she writes, "a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation--and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live." This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.
Writing in the Asylum by Jennifer McCormick
Jennifer McCormick opens a fascinating window on the lives of young women, showing how poetry can create a sense of security and self-esteem in the often sterile, violent, and oppressive environment of an urban high school. The students' poetry is at once disturbing and beautiful, hopeful and bleak, and McCormick's depiction of the increasingly institutionalized nature of urban schools is riveting. The author crafts a compelling argument that shows the power of poetry as a response to the depersonalization that students face in many urban high schools, and shows readers how it flourishes both despite and because of the violence and 'criminalizing institutional routines' of many state schools.