April is National Poetry Month. These are the eight collections worth beginning with. Some will comfort you. Some will dismantle you. All of them are worth it.
The book that made a generation realise poetry was not dead. It was just waiting to be felt.
Milk and Honey
Not comfort. Transformation. Read this when you are ready to be taken apart.
Ariel: The Restored Edition - Plath's Manuscript (Modern Classics)
She watched the world more carefully than anyone. These poems are the proof.
Devotions: Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
The book every person who has ever doubted their own creativity needs. Once. Then again.
Letters to a Young Poet (Penguin Classics)
The most beautiful debut poetry collection of the last decade. Full stop.
Night Sky with Exit Wounds
Eight hundred years old and still the most accurate description of longing ever written.
The Essential Rumi, New Expanded Edition
For the reader who finished Milk and Honey and immediately needed more.
The Sun and Her Flowers
Because reading poetry makes you want to write it. Give yourself somewhere to try.
Grimoire Journal 7x10in, 256 Lined Pages
April is the cruelest month. He wrote the poem about it.
The Waste Land and Other Poems: Norton Edition
The most American poem ever written. Read it outside.
Leaves of Grass: Exact Facsimile 1855 Ed.
The US Poet Laureate. Read her before everyone else discovers her.
Bright Dead Things: Poems
The poetry collection that changed how an entire generation writes about love.
