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Poetry Collections on Hoopla

By Becca Boland

I have found a lot of comfort in poetry collections in the last year. Poems may be short, but the emotion is intense. If you've had trouble reading in the past year, maybe start with some poetry and see where it takes you? A wealth of fantastic poetry collections await on Hoopla. This is only a small fraction of what you will find through this amazing service.

  • Night Sky with Exit Wounds

    2016 by Vuong, Ocean

    I am the biggest fan of Vuong's novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Long before he was a published novelist, Vuong was a poet. This is first full-length collection and it aims straight for the perennial "big"and very human subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. “This is a lovely lovely book of poems. Nearly every poem ended in a way that left me saying "mmmmm" with pleasure or admiration or the quiet of feeling stunned by such beautiful words.” - Roxane Gay

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  • Electric Arches

    2017 by Ewing, Eve L.

    "In this stunning debut, poet and sociologist Ewing brings to bear a variety of forms and mediums—including the prose poem, the lyric, mixed media collage, handwritten notes and ephemera, and the verse play—on set of related questions about the nature of art and politics. Ewing ponders what the “big fireworks” of the imagination make possible for social justice, asking how “the places we invent” can change the ways we negotiate a broken system." - Publishers Weekly

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  • Obit: Poems

    2020 by Chang, Victoria

    After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in Poetry. This collection is heartbreaking but also healing.

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  • How to Cure a Ghost

    2019 by Róisín, Fariha

    A book of self-healing, but it explores this through a core theme: identity. What does it mean to be someone who grieves, who has a body, who loves, who is feared, and who fears the world around them?

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  • Aphrodite Made Me Do It

    2019 by Mateer, Trista

    A combination of poetry, art and mythology to explore the concept of self-care. I discovered Mateer's poetry in 2020 and I am all in. This is a collection you can enjoy even if you identify as someone who doesn't generally like poetry.

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  • Not Go Away Is My Name

    2020 by Ríos, Alberto

    "Ríos's poems of memory and aspiration are small masterpieces of clarity and caring, "Hard at the work of being human." A richly hopeful collection that seems especially vital now." - Library Journal

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  • Hard Child

    2017 by Shapero, Natalie

    This collection was shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize. The committee in describing the work said, "We certainly feel like the poet is speaking to us—not singing, but certainly with—is abundantly expressing her thoughts and feelings. The lightly sardonic tone, describes situations ranging from the troubling, tacky or vulgar to the downright horrific, but it's all paced and leavened with dark humour."

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  • How To Carry Water: Selected Poems Of Lucille Clifton

    2020 by Clifton, Lucille

    "In these poems, versions of Clifton past and future, third and first-person, are on a quest toward understanding selfhood. “i am lucille,” she writes, “which stands for light.” That light refracts through the book as an insistence on survival, contemplation of the political, and delight in the ordinary. Clifton’s poems are profound and powerful to behold." - Publishers Weekly

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  • El Dorado Freddy's: Chain Restaurants In Poems And Photographs

    2020 by Caine, Danny

    A favorite among our staff. El Dorado Freddy's may be the first book of fast food poetry. Caine "reviews" chain restaurants, taking on topics such as parenting, the Midwest, politics, and chicken fingers along the way. Caine's funny, deceptively accomplished poems are paired with Tara Wray's color-drenched photos. The result is a literary yet goofy book about American food and identity.

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  • Milk and Honey

    2015 by Kaur, Rupi

    A collection that combines poetry with line drawings, Milk and Honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.In 2016, Milk and Honey beat out the next-best-selling work of poetry—The Odyssey­—by a factor of ten.

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  • Memories

    2015 by Leav, Lang

    Memories is a collection that consists of a mix of the best of Lang Leav’s previous work Lullabies and Love & Misadventure and quite a few new poems. This collection is illustrated by the author and all poems and thoughts have the same general theme: love. Lang Leav explores love and broken relationships in poems and thoughts full of emotion that will sound familiar to most of us.

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  • Dream Work

    2014 by Oliver, Mary

    These poems illuminate the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit. Accepting the truth about one's personal world and valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships. The collection includes one of Oliver’s most beloved poems, Wild Geese.

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  • Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back

    2020 by Cook, Alicia

    Divided into two parts, “Side A” holds 92 poems, titled as “tracks,” and “Side B” holds the “remixes,” or blackout-poetry versions, of those same poems. Under each poem Cook has included a "currently listening to" song as a companion to the piece.

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  • 100 Selected Poems

    2014 by Cummings, E. E.

    This collection contains one hundred of cummings’s wittiest and most profound poems, harvested from thirty-five of the most radically creative years in contemporary American poetry. It holds a special place in my heart because it is the first book I ever gave my husband.

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  • Honeybee: Poems

    2018 by Mateer, Trista

    "I never tell the whole truth in my poems. I wanted them to be better than us."

    A book about walking away and feeling like you've been walked away from. This is everything I want in a poetry collection.

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  • Ariel: The Restored Edition

    2016 by Plath, Sylvia

    This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original—handwritten notes—and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This collection marks a right of passage for me. It is the first book of poetry I ever bought for myself. Just teenage me, full of angst, in a used book store with my own hard-earned babysitting money.

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  • The Princess Saves Herself in This One

    2017 by Lovelace, Amanda

    Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Poetry (2016), this books is a collection of poetry about resilience. It is about writing your own ending.

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  • The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson: Published As They Were Written, With Very Few And Superficial Changes

    2015 by Dickinson, Emily

    Could there be a better subtitle for this collection of poetry? Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published was usually altered significantly by the publishers. Most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing. It was not until after her younger sister discovered her cache of poems that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent.

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  • She Felt Like Feeling Nothing

    2018 by Sin, R. H.

    There are moments when the heart no longer wishes to feel because everything it's felt up until then has brought it nothing but anguish. In She Felt Like Feeling Nothing, Sin pursues themes of self-discovery and retrospection. With this book, the poet intends to create a safe space where women can rest their weary hearts and focus on themselves.

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  • Today Means Amen

    by DeMulder, Sierra

    Dear you: Whoever you are, However you got here, This is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you.

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  • I Wrote This for You

    2018 by Thomas, Iain S.

    Who is the you in I Wrote This For You? The cheap and easy answer is "Well, it's a secret between me and 'you.'"

    Here's the harder and more expensive one. The subject changes. At one point, it was a series of current then ex-girlfriends. Sometimes, it's my wife. But most often, I'm writing to myself, telling myself the things I'd want to hear if I could step outside myself and give myself some perspective. I'm, literally, talking to myself. Or else, I'm just trying to find something that everyone might feel but no one's spoken about yet. I think if I can find something that makes people go "Oh yeah, I know how that feels, but I've never thought of it that way," then I've done my job.

    So, "you" change(s). - Iain S. Thomas (pleasefindthis)

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  • Inward

    2018 by Yung Pueblo

    Inward is a collection of poetry, quotes, and prose that explores the movement from self love to unconditional love, the power of letting go, and the wisdom that comes when we truly try to know ourselves. It serves as a reminder to the reader that healing, transformation, and freedom are possible. This collection reads like a meditation.

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