For 80 years, the Academy of American Poets has been one of the most influential and respected champions of contemporary American poetry. Through their successful Poem-a-Day online program, the Academy continues to celebrate verse by delivering poems to thousands of e-mail subscribers each morning. Now for the first time, the poems selected by the Academy for this program are available in book form so that they can be collected and savored. Loosely organized according to the flow and themes of the seasons (for example, the month of February includes poems on love, lust, and heartache), this substantial volume is designed to encourage the daily practice of reading poetry. A thematic index is included so that poems can be sought out for popular occasions such as marriage, graduation, and holidays, or enjoyed any day of the year.

"Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year is not just for Christmas, but for all time." —Helena Bonham Carter A magnificent collection of 365 passages from Shakespeare's works, for the Shakespeare scholar and neophyte alike. Make Shakespeare a part of your daily routine with Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, a yearlong collection of passages from Shakespeare's greatest works. Drawing from the full spectrum of plays and sonnets to mark each day of the year, whether it's a scene from Hamlet to celebrate Christmas or a Sonnet in June to help you enjoy a summer's day. There are also passages to mark important days in the Shakespeare calendar, both from his own life and from his plays: You'll read a pivotal speech from Julius Caesar on the Ides of March and celebrate Valentine's day with a sonnet. Every passage is accompanied by an enlightening note to teach you its significance and help you better appreciate the timelessness and poetry of Shakespeare's words. Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year will give you a thoughtful way reflect on each day, all while giving you a deeper appreciation for the most famous writer in the English language.

Within the pages of Allie Esiri's gorgeous collection, A Poem for Every Winter Day, you will find verse that will transport you to sparkling winter scenes, taking you from Christmas, to New Years Eve and the joys of Valentines Day. The poems are selected from Allie Esiri’s bestselling poetry anthologies A Poem for Every Day of the Year and A Poem for Every Night of the Year. Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, this book dazzles with an array of familiar favourites and remarkable new discoveries. These seasonal poems – together with introductory paragraphs – have a link to the date on which they appear. Includes poems by Mary Oliver, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Hardy, E. E. Cummings and Robert Burns who sit alongside Benjamin Zephaniah, Wendy Cope, Roger McGough and Jackie Kay. This soul-enhancing book will keep you company for every day of winter.

From The Horse That, Trotting The horse that, trotting with open heart Against the wind, achieves bend and flow Will live forever. So far, so good, But they never do, until too late, Bend properly and time spreads from The momentary hesitations Of their spines, circles their tossing necks, Falls from their teeth like rejected oats, Litters the ground like penitence. This is where we come in, where the drop Of time congeals the air and someone Speaks to the discouraged grass . . . Tricks of the Light explores the often fraught relationships between domestic animals and humans through mythological figurations, vibrant thought, and late-modern lyrics that seem to test their own boundaries. Vicki Hearne (1946–2001), best known and celebrated today as a writer of strikingly original poetry and prose, was a capable dog and horse trainer, and sometimes controversial animal advocate. This definitive collection of Hearne’s poetry spans the entirety of her illustrious career, from her first book, Nervous Horses (1980), to never-before-published poems composed on her deathbed. But no matter the source, each of her meditative, metaphysical lyrics possesses that rare combination of philosophical speculation, practical knowledge of animals, and an unusually elegant style unlike that of any other poet writing today. Before her untimely death, Hearne entrusted the manuscript to distinguished poet, scholar, and long-time friend John Hollander, whose introduction provides both critical and personal insight into the poet’s magnum opus. Tricks of the Light—acute, vibrant, and deeply informed—is a sensuous reckoning of the connection between humans and the natural world. Praise for The Parts of Light “Hearne . . . strives to capture exactly what she knows she can't—the intense immediacy of animal consciousness, a consciousness free of the moral vagaries and intellectual preoccupations that pockmark human experience. Her style, smooth in some places, choppy in others, reflects both the wholeness of animal presence and the jarring, fragmentary nature of human reason and reflection. Hearne's poems demand participation, refuse passive enjoyment; she dares the reader to stay in the saddle.”—Publishers Weekly

"180 More" continues Collins's program in conjunction with the Library of Congress to gather poems by the most exciting poets at work today and make them available to students, teachers, and poetry readers everywhere. High school & older.

"In late August of 1975 when my wife Gailyn and I and our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter arrived in Bolinas, I was almost 29 years old and had become known for writing minimal poetry sometimes consisting of a single word", Aram Saroyan writes in his introduction to Day and Night. "A young writer's ego is a delicate matter, subject as it is to routine battery and assault. When I wrote the first section of a long poem called 'Lines for My Autobiography' one afternoon on the typewriter in the poet Joanne Kyger's house. I was both exhilarated and uneasy. After all, it was two and a half pages long and I'd never before written a poem of even half its length. I ended up throwing it in the waste basket, but Gailyn fished it out, read it, and told me it was the best thing I'd ever written and to go on writing it". That poem and many others like it -- limpid, direct, revealing, open-hearted essays toward a first-person life story -- make up Saroyan's very appealing book about "big-city boys...becoming farmers" in an eccentric, idealist, crackpot-utopian California beach town in the 1970s. This is an unashamedly youthful book, starry-eyed in its approach to family-starting and community-founding, innocently celebrative of the simple wonders of a life lived close to nature. Glancing back at a glamorous but troubled childhood spent among the bright lights of Manhattan and the luxuriant palms of Beverly Hills, the young Saroyan experiences this new world with a freshness of vision.

It's easy to make one, lying on your back in the newest snow. You move your arms like wings. Later you forget about your creation, go inside for a mug of hot chocolate. That's when she rises from the snow takes a feathery breath, tries out her wings. So begins a poem about making a snow angel, but it might also refer to the mysterious way that a poem comes into being and takes on a life of its own. In this new collection, Ralph Fletcher shows us how you can write a poem about almost anything: a baby sister, a Venus's-flytrap, a failing grandmother, a squished squirrel, grammar homework, and more. These poems take us inside the creative process as they reveal both the playfulness and the power of poetry. More than anything, they invite us to pick up pen and paper and write some poems of your own.