With playful prose and vivid art, Things to Do brings to life the small moments and secret joys of a child's day. There are wonders everywhere. In the sky and on the ground—blooming in a flower bed, dangling from a silken thread, buzzing through the summer air—waiting ...waiting to be found. In this thoughtful and ingenious collection of poems, Elaine Magliaro, an elementary school teacher for more than three decades and a school librarian for three years, and illustrator Catia Chien provide a luminous glimpse of the ordinary wonders all around us. Plus, this is the fixed format version, which looks almost identical to the print edition.

In this volume, fifteen scholars and poets, from Austria, Britain, Czechia, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, and Russia, explore the topic of things and objects in poetry written in a number of different languages and in different eras. The book begins with ancient poetry, then moves on to demonstrate the significance of objects in the Chinese poetic tradition. From there, the focus shifts to things and objects in the poetry of the twentieth and the twenty-first century, examining the work of Czech, Polish, and Russian poets alongside other key figures such as Rilke, Francis Ponge, William Carlos Williams, and Paul Muldoon. Along the way, the reader gets an introduction to key terms and phrases that have been associated with things in the course of poetic history, such as ekphrasis, objective lyricism, and hyperobjects.

'Bright Dead Things buoyed me in this dismal year. I'm thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction.' Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, Bright Dead Things considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact - tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker's sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth and falls in love. In these extraordinary poems Ada Limón's heart becomes a 'huge beating genius machine' striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. 'I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,' the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds and Mark Doty, Limón's work is consistently generous, accessible, and 'effortlessly lyrical' (New York Times) - though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt and lived.

“From birdhouses to shadow puppets, the variety of projects included are delightful . . . An effective medley of concept, poetry, and artwork.”—School Library Journal For young makers and artists, brief, lively poems illustrated by a New York Times bestselling duo celebrate the pleasures of working with your hands. Building, baking, folding, drawing, shaping . . . making something with your own hands is a special, personal experience. Taking an idea from your imagination and turning it into something real is satisfying and makes the maker proud. With My Hands is an inspiring invitation to tap into creativity and enjoy the hands-on energy that comes from making things. “Poetry sparks an irresistible, primal urge to twist, cut, paint, draw, glue, carve, whittle, daub, tie, hammer, to simply make.”—Kirkus Reviews “A cheery reminder of the pride of creating something and the many forms art can take.”—Publishers Weekly “Whether invoking cooking, sewing, tying knots, or other undertakings, this provides an enjoyable springboard for aspiring makers.”—Booklist

Nobel laureate poet Czeslaw Milosz personal selection of 300 of the world's greatest poems written throughout the ages and around the world.

"Exquisite . . . A powerful example of how to carry the things that define us without being broken by them." --WASHINGTON POST

With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poet Mary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems from Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts an extraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space. "Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.