Howdy!
Happy April! In honor of April being National Poetry Month, below are some recommended poetry books. To request any of the titles below, click on the hyperlinked title. If you have any issues placing a request, please contact Amanda May at asmay@missouri.edu
Our picks for April:
![Ephemera [Book]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71IsbayNUIL.jpg)
If every experience lasted forever and the sands of time never interrupted our most loving moments, there would be nothing to immortalise in writing. In Sierra DeMulder’s melancholic yet beautifully hopeful poetry collection, Ephemera, she writes with the wisdom of someone who has learned to love and lose. Each poem reads delicately and elegantly, just fleeting memories on the page. Split into 4 sections detailing intimate experiences from the painful deaths of family members who clung to life, to passionate love she feels for her own mortal wife, DeMulder plays a sweet song by pulling on her own well worn heart strings. While maintaining a muted emotional intensity, the poems keep their grounding in reality, never straying to supercillous territory, perhaps recognising their own ephemeral quality. DeMulder ruminates on what will come and what will fade. Despite this impermanent nature, you can feel the tender warmth DeMulder holds for her family in every line, even the moments she wishes she could forget.
Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as “far and away, this country’s best selling poet” by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years. Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver’s work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015.
When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. Her husband, Ted Hughes, brought the collection to life in 1966, and its publication garnered worldwide acclaim. This collection showcases the beloved poet’s brilliant, provoking, and always moving poems, including “Ariel” and once again shows why readers have fallen in love with her work throughout the generations.
Making the New Lamb Take by Gabriel Fried
In Gabriel Fried’s debut volume, the reader weaves through details of daily life, dream-life, and the afterlife. In the process, we find ourselves unexpectedly amidst biblical and mythological stories so intimately retold that they seem populated by friends and relatives. Be sure to also check out Mr. Fried’s new collection of poetry, No Small Thing.