Kim Myeong-sun is Korea's first published woman writer. Fruit of Life: Poems (생명의 과실: 김명순 시선) is the first book-length, Korean-to-English translation of her poetry. Kim’s poems offer a raw portrait of 1920s–30s Korea, driven by her personal experiences of sexual assault, misogynistic journalism and criticism, displacement, and poverty during the Japanese colonial occupation (1910–1945). Alongside feminist critique, Kim also writes about sapphic desire, familial affection, and natu...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning poet reveals how poetry is a powerful tool of connection and understanding in a fractured world.Drawing on deep passion and personal experience, former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith demystifies the art form that has too often been mischaracterized as “inaccessible,” “irrelevant,” or “intimidating.” She argues that poetry is rooted in fundamentally human qualities innate to our capacities to love, dream, question, and cultivate community. ...

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize* Poet Laureate of the United States ** A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice ** A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year *New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose "lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter" (Publishers Weekly, starred review...

**NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • This dazzling memoir from the former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Life on Mars is the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America."Engrossing in its spare, simple understatement.... Evocative ... luminous." —The Washington Post**In Ordinary Light, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her...

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot PrizeFinalist for the Forward Prize for Best CollectionThe extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United StatesEven the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys, what elseAre they so buffered against, if not love’s bladeSizing up the heart’s familiar meat?We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.

Winner of the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry PrizeThe poems in Sister Tongue explore negative spaces—the distance between twin sisters, between lovers, between Farsi and English, between the poet's upbringing in California and her family in Iran. This space between vibrates with loss and longing, arcing with tension. Farnaz Fatemi's poetry delves into the intricacies of the relational space between people, the depth of ancestral roots, and the visceral memo...

**Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.A Penguin Classic**First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of co...

The National Book Award-winning poet traces her family history back through Jim Crow, the slave trade, and West Africa in this “powerful” biography “about looking for family and family roots” (“All Things Considered,” NPR).“Impressive—honest, clear-eyed with a shapeliness natural to poets.” —Toni MorrisonBuffalo, New York. A father’s funeral. Memory.In Generations, Lucille Clifton’s formidable poetic gift emerges i...

A visionary new collection by former poet laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Tracy K. SmithThe forest in Tracy K. Smith’s brilliant new work is and is not a metaphor. While these poems strive to hear and to heed the voices of the earth and its nations of trees, they also test a discomfiting view of humanity, not as divided and opposing factions but as a vast cacophonous family connected by a single deep root.The Forest grapples with viol...

Teacher and former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith explores the art of poetry through twenty of her favorite Emily Dickinson poems.In this small intimate volume, acclaimed poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith shares twenty of her favorite Emily Dickinson poems—chosen for their ability to provide pleasure, spiritual sustenance, and wisdom. More than just an introduction to Emily Dickinson, this gift edition offers a seasoned teacher and poet's persona...

**This kaleidoscopic portrait of an unprecedented time brings together some of our most treasured writers today—Edwidge Danticat, Layli Long Soldier, Monica Youn, Julia Alvarez, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor—to give voice to the unthinkable grief and hopeful possibilities born in an era of revolution and change.“A maelstrom of grief, anger, fear and confusion, with glimmers of gratitude and hope: a comprehensive emotional document of a moment.”—New York Times B...

A TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America might—together—come to a new view of our shared past“A vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evils...Hopeful...Beautiful and haunting.” —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again...