BVBook Verdict

Fiction

Poetry to Start With

Approachable, rewarding collections for readers who think poetry isn't for them.

14 books · ranked

  1. 1

    The Waste Land

    T.S. Eliot · 1922 · Poetry

    The fractured, allusive poem that became the emblem of modernism; difficult, dazzling, endlessly studied.

  2. 2

    Devotions

    Mary Oliver · 2017 · Poetry

    A career-spanning selection from a poet of attention and the natural world; the perfect place to begin.

  3. 3

    Leaves of Grass

    Walt Whitman · 1855 · Poetry

    Expansive, body-and-soul American free verse; the revolutionary collection Whitman revised all his life.

  4. 4

    Ariel

    Sylvia Plath · 1965 · Poetry

    Fierce, exact late poems published after the poet's death; raw and technically brilliant.

  5. 5

    Night Sky with Exit Wounds

    Ocean Vuong · 2016 · Poetry

    Tender, violent poems of family, war and desire; a striking debut collection.

  6. 6

    Death of a Naturalist

    Seamus Heaney · 1966 · Poetry

    Earthy, precise poems of rural Ireland and boyhood; the debut of a Nobel laureate.

  7. 7

    And Still I Rise

    Maya Angelou · 1978 · Poetry

    Defiant, joyful poems of survival and self-worth; among the most quoted verse of the century.

  8. 8

    A Child's Garden of Verses

    Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885 · Poetry

    Rediscover the delight and innocence of childhood in these classic poems from celebrated author, Robert Louis Stevenson. From make-believe to climbing trees, bedtime stories to morning play and favour

  9. 9

    Alcools

    Guillaume Apollinaire · 1920 · Poetry

    A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien Bergere o tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bele ce matin Tu en as assez de vivre dans l'antiquite grecque et romaine Ici meme les automobiles ont l'air d'etre an

  10. 10

    Alfred Tennyson

    Andrew Lang · 1901 · Poetry

    In writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the tex

  11. 11

    Beams

    Adam Fieled · 2005 · Poetry

    Beams, an e-text in four parts (Beams, Apparition Poems, Madame Psychosis, Virtual Pinball), is an exercise in conglomerating several different schools and strains of poetry: the Modern, the post-mode

  12. 12

    Biographia literaria

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1817 · Poetry

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1817 work Biographia Literaria is an autobiography in discourse; loosely structured and non-linear, the work is meditative and contains numerous philosophical essays. Initial

  13. 13

    Borderlands

    Gloria Anzaldúa · 1987 · Poetry

    "Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume challenge how we think about identity. Borderlands/La Frontera remaps o

  14. 14

    Canti

    Giacomo Leopardi · 1900 · Poetry

    Canti is a collection of poems by Giacomo Leopardi, generally considered to be one of the most significant works of Italian poetry.

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