Poetry for Pleasure is an anthology representative of the great wealth of English poetry written between the sixteenth century and the present day. The book is arranged in fifteen sections, each devoted to a different theme. The first two of these comprise verse written mainly for, or about, the young or the very young. Subsequent sections deal with such varied subjects as country pleasures, love and friendship, music and dancing, the sea, time, age, sleep, and death. In fact they cover almost the whole range of human experience. Inevitably, a number of poems will be familiar to most readers, but some will be new to many.

Yusef Komunyakaa is best known for "Neon Vernacular", which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994, and for Dien Cai Dau, poems chronicling his experiences as a journalist in Vietnam. "Pleasure Dome" gathers over two and a half decades of Komunyakaa'swork, 25 early uncollected poems and 18 new poems.

New prose poems by Gary Young, author of No Other Life.

These terse lyrics engage the reader with humor, brio, and bite. In these wildly imaginative poems, Karen Hildebrand reminds us of the strangeness of the everyday and the pleasure in those ripe moments when past and present buckle and overlap. Funny, fervent, and fierce, Crossing Pleasure Avenue is also delightfully profound.

Alex Dimitrov’s third book, Love and Other Poems, is full of praise for the world we live in. Taking time as an overarching structure—specifically, the twelve months of the year—Dimitrov elevates the everyday, and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.” Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy, even in despair. These poems are curious about who we are as people and shamelessly interested in hope.

A groundbreaking anthology of well-known female poets that broadens traditional notions of erotic poetry.