Top Ten Tuesday; Poetry Books Worth Picking Up

It's Tuesday, and thus perhaps time for yet another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and as it was freebie week in terms of themes, I decided writing a top ten list of poetry books worth picking up. I tried finding and picking a variety of styles, because as with books in general, while one person would dislike one style of poetry, another person would perhaps love it.

Here's my ten picks.

Haiku Illustrated: Classic Japanese Short Poems translated by Hart Larrabee

Description from Goodreads

Haiku – seventeen-syllable poems that evoke worlds despite their brevity – have captivated Japanese readers since the seventeenth century. Today the form is practiced worldwide and has become established as part of our common global heritage. This beautiful traditionally hand-bound volume presents new English translations of classic poems by the four great masters of Japanese haiku – Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masaoka Shiki – accompanied by both the original Japanese and a phonetic transcription, and a photograph or artwork highlighting or echoing the poem's theme. With a timeless design, Haiku Illustrated is an expert introduction and celebration of one of the most beautiful and accessible forms of poetry in the world.

Prison Poems by Mahvash Sabet

Description from Goodreads
Poems by Mahvash Sabet , one of the seven members of the Yaran-- the group of imprisoned Bahá'í leaders in Iran. These poems testify to the courage and the despair, the misery and the hopes of thousands of Iranians struggling to survive conditions of extreme oppression. Her poems have allowed her to speak when words were denied, to talk when no one was listening to her. But unlike many prison poems, hers are not merely a catalogue of hopes and fears. Sometimes a means of historical documentation, a chronicle of what the Bahá’ís have been subjected to since their incarceration; sometimes a series of portraits of other women trapped in prison with her; sometimes meditations on powerlessness, on loneliness; her poems are plangent with appeal, ardent with hope – for whatever the accusations against her, she is a prisoner of faith.

World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others edited by Candace Ward

Description from Goodreads

Ironically, the horrors of World War One produced a splendid flowering of British verse as young poets, many of them combatants, confronted their own morality, the death of dear friends, the loss of innocence, the failure of civilization, and the madness of war itself.
This volume contains a rich selection of poems from that time by Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and others known especially for their war poetry — as well as poems by such major poets as Robert Graves, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Robert Bridges, and Rudyard Kipling.
Included among a wealth of memorable verses are Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier," Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "In the Pink" by Siegfried Sassoon, "In Flanders Fields" by Lieut. Col. McCrae, Robert Bridges' "To the United States of America," Thomas Hardy's "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations,'" Robert Graves’s “A Dead Boche,” as well as works by Walter de la Mare, May Wedderburn Cannan, Ivor Gurney, Alice Meynell, and Edward Thomas.
Moving and powerful, this carefully chosen collection offers today's readers an excellent overview of the broad range of verse produced as poets responded to the carnage on the fields of Belgium and France.

Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

Description from Goodreads

Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This new collection brings together the famous poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counterculture. They include the apocalyptic 'Howl', which became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956; the moving lament for his dead mother, 'Kaddish'; the searing indictment of his homeland, 'America'; and the confessional 'Mescaline'. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, they show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.

She's Magic & Midnight Lace by Ann Marie Eleazer

Description from Goodreads

Ann Marie Eleazer has always considered herself a bit ancient, haunted and otherworldly, who enjoys enchanted flights through the dark fairy tales and magical places she's been drawn to since childhood.

She's Magic & Midnight Lace is a beautiful collection of poetry and prose, or as author, Ann Marie Eleazer says, Poems and Poetic Spells . Each page is filled with her writings that will charm you and leave you spellbound. "

She's Magic & Midnight Lace has over 200 hand-selected pieces from the soul of the author that will lure you in, giving you a better understanding of the mystery of the darkness, and have you believing just how magical life really can be.

Playing with Matches by Michael Faudet

Description from Goodreads

Playing with Matches is the ultimate collector’s edition by internationally best-selling poet, Michael Faudet. A beautiful hardcover gift book that has been personally curated by the author featuring a compilation of the best work from his five published books and thirty-five new pieces of poetry and prose for readers to discover. A wonderful addition to any bookshelf.

To complement the exquisite and evocative poetry, prose, and short stories, this gorgeous book also gives readers a private glimpse into the author’s life. Comprising of black and white photographs taken by Michael Faudet that capture the inspiration behind the writing.

Playing with Matches is a must-have for fans of Dirty Pretty Things , Bitter Sweet Love , Smoke & Mirrors , Winter of Summers , and Cult of Two . A poetry lover’s delight with an additional 35 new pieces never before published in any Michael Faudet collection. An intricate exploration of love, heartbreak, seduction, self-empowerment, and sex that will spark your imagination and ignite the flames of passion that burn inside all of us.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda

Description from Goodreads

When it first appeared in 1924, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada launched a young and unknown poet, whose work would ignite a generation, into the international spotlight.

Drawn from the most intimate and personal of associations, Pablo Neruda's most beloved collection of poetry juxtaposes the exuberance of youthful passion with the desolation of grief, the sensuality of the body with the metaphorical nuances of nature.

Eighty years after its publication, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.

Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath

Description from Goodreads

Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.

When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript—including handwritten notes—and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

Description from Goodreads

A beautiful new edition of this beloved poet's first collection, originally published in 1926 when he was just twenty-four.
From the opening "Proem" (prologue poem) he offers in this first book-"I am a Negro: / Black as night is black, / Black the depths of my Africa"-Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans, at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As his Knopf editor Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 volume, illuminating the potential of this promising young voice, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race...Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal" and, he concludes, they are "the expression [of] an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, sometimes with shocking confidence and clarity: "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies / That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers/ Of the world."

Harlem Shadows: Poems by Claude McKay

Description from Goodreads

A harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance first published in 1922, this collection of poignant, lyrical poems explores the author's yearning for his Jamaican homeland and the bitter plight of Black people in America--now with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown.

With pure heart, passion, and honesty, Claude McKay offers an acute reflection on the complex nature of racial identity in the Caribbean diaspora, encompassing issues such as nationalism, freedom of expression, class, gender, and sex. The collection's eponymous poem, Harlem Shadows, portrays the struggle of sex workers in 1920s Harlem. In If We Must Die, McKay calls for justice and retribution for Black people in the face of racist abuse.

Juxtaposing the cruel noise of New York City with the serene beauties of Jamaica, McKay urges us to reckon with the oppression that plagues a long-suffering race, which he argues has no home in a white man's world. Poems of Blackness, queerness, desire, performance, and love are infused with a radical message of resistance in this sonorous cry for universal human rights. Simultaneously a love letter to the spirit of New York City and a list of grievances with its harsh cruelty, Harlem Shadows is a stunning collection that remains all too relevant one hundred years after its original publication.