In language for lateral thinkers, Michael Rosen captures childhood with all its guilt and innocence in these wonderfully-observed poems.

The first appearance of this award-winning writer's work since the 1940s, this collection, which includes an introduction by John Ashbery, restores Joan Murray's striking poetry to its originally intended form. Though John Ashbery hailed Joan Murray as a key influence on his work, Murray’s sole collection, Poems, published after her death at the early age of twenty-four and selected by W. H. Auden for inclusion in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, has been almost entirely unavailable for the better part of half a century. Poems was put together by Grant Code, a close friend of Murray’s mother, and when Murray’s papers, long thought to be lost, reappeared in 2013, it became clear that Code had exercised a heavy editorial hand. This new collection, edited by Farnoosh Fathi from Murray’s original manuscripts, restores Murray’s raw lyricism and visionary lines, while also including a good deal of previously unpublished work, as well as a selection of her exuberant letters.

"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--

A wonderfully exuberant yet poignant poetry collection from one of Britain's greatest children's poets Michael Rosen. Here are tales of childhood, from the horrors of being late for school, to making a raft, and going to a cafe, as well as poems to ponder - just think, how great would Satnav trousers be! Touching, light-hearted and funny, Michael's poems will delight readers young and old. Former Children's Laureate, Michael continuously promotes the need for children's poetry in our education system, and this collection, first published in 2010, has something for everyone.

what it means to be avant-garde is David Antin's third collection of "talk poems" published by New Directions. As in his earlier talking at the boundaries (1976), and tuning (winner of the 1984 PEN/Los Angeles Literary Award for Poetry), Antin's brilliant improvised disquisitions at once challenge readers' expectations even as they instruct and entertain. A poet, performance artist, art critic, and professor of visual arts, Antin, since his college days in New York in the '50s, has been at the cutting edge of the avant-garde. The avant-garde? Yes, if by this is meant not an image of fashion but the place where art and life intersect, imparting to both a greater urgency - if is meant the place where experience and knowledge find their deepest expression, where the idea of a universal language can find shape, where the price of art is itself, where the fringe is the very center of existence.

Every day people tune in to The Writer's Almanac on public radio and hear Garrison Keillor read them a poem. And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, chosen by the narrator for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their "utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m." The title Good Poems comes from common literary parlance. For writers, it's enough to refer to somebody having written a good poem. Somebody else can worry about greatness. Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" is a good poem, and so is James Wright's "A Blessing." Regular people love those poems. People read them aloud at weddings, people send them by e-mail. Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendance. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. It's a book of poems for anybody who loves poetry whether they know it or not.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rhett Miller teams up with Caldecott Medalist and bestselling artist Dan Santat in a riotous collection of irreverent poems for modern families. In the tradition of Shel Silverstein, these poems bring a fresh new twist to the classic dilemmas of childhood as well as a perceptive eye to the foibles of modern family life. Full of clever wordplay and bright visual gags--and toilet humor to spare--these twenty-three rhyming poems make for an ideal read-aloud experience. Taking on the subjects of a bullying baseball coach and annoying little brothers with equally sly humor, renowned lyricist Rhett Miller's clever verses will have the whole family cackling.

Praise for Saeed Jones: "Jones is the kind of writer who's more than wanted: he's desperately needed."—FlavorWire "I get shout-happy when I read these poems; they are the gospel; they are the good news of the sustaining power of imagination, tenderness, and outright joy."—D. A. Powell "Prelude to Bruise works its tempestuous mojo just under the skin, wreaking a sweet havoc and rearranging the pulse. These poems don't dole out mercy. Mr. Jones undoubtedly dipped his pen in fierce before crafting these stanzas that rock like backslap. Straighten your skirt, children. The doors of the church are open."—Patricia Smith "It's a big book, a major book. A game-changer. Dazzling, brutal, real. Not just brilliant, caustic, and impassioned but a work that brings history—in which the personal and political are inter-constitutive—to the immediate moment. Jones takes a reader deep into lived experience, into a charged world divided among unstable yet entrenched lines: racial, gendered, political, sexual, familial. Here we absorb each quiet resistance, each whoop of joy, a knowledge of violence and of desire, an unbearable ache/loss/yearning. This is not just a "new voice" but a new song, a new way of singing, a new music made of deep grief's wildfire, of burning intelligence and of all-feeling heart, scorched and seared. In a poem, Jones says, "Boy's body is a song only he can hear." But now that we have this book, we can all hear it. And it's unforgettable."—Brenda Shaughnessy "Inside each hunger, each desire, speaks the voice of a boy that admits "I've always wanted to be dangerous." This is not a threat but a promise to break away from the affliction of silence, to make audible the stories that trouble the dimensions of masculinity and discomfort the polite conversations about race. With impressive grace, Saeed Jones situates the queer black body at the center, where his visibility and vulnerability nurture emotional strength and the irrepressible energy to claim those spaces that were once denied or withheld from him. Prelude to a Bruise is a daring debut."—Rigoberto González From "Sleeping Arrangement": Take your hand out from under my pillow. And take your sheets with you. Drag them under. Make pretend ghosts. I can't have you rattling the bed springs so keep still, keep quiet. Mistake yourself for shadows. Learn the lullabies of lint. Saeed Jones works as the editor of BuzzfeedLGBT.

Somber poems deal with the end of summer, winter dawn, travel, mortality, childhood, education, nature and the spiritual aspects of life.