Young People’s Poet Laureate Monthly Book Picks

I’m a sucker for a well-done novel in verse. Readers get not only a narrative thread to unspool, but also elevated attention to sharp imagery and subversive language. Dean Atta’s Black Flamingo holds the story and the form in both hands, offering a tightly plotted, lovingly interior portrayal of Michael, a young Londoner. He is the son of a Greek mother and a Jamaican father, and must contend with the wound of not having his father in his life while trying to develop a sense of self pertaining to his race and his sexuality. Through drag, Michael finds grounding freedom that is reflected in the triumph and joy of Atta’s verse.

Home Is Not a Country is Safia Elhillo’s debut young adult novel in verse. The book follows a young Muslim teen navigating the life she has and the life she could have had if pivotal moments between her parents had gone differently. Elhillo’s pen game is unlike that of any other novelist writing in verse; she easily weaves through past and present, sorrow and sarcasm and pushes readers to confront the surrealism of the immigrant experience. Magical realism in verse has to be one of the toughest objectives to pull off. Fantasy often involves big world-building and large casts of characters; verse features brevity and elevates language. Elhillo is in a lane of her own—I do not say that lightly.

It’s a great luxury to focus on the work of just one writer any time you can. We live in the era of bouncy gloss – one headline to another, one voice to the next. But to bask in the study and consideration of one great person can deepen us in a more enduring way. I’ll never forget an entire satisfying week focusing on the poems of W.S. Merwin with the girls at Hockaday School in Dallas. Due to deeper focus on such great poems, we were all transported into a higher-than-usual frame of mind and mystery by the end of week. Only one person asked me why I hadn’t chosen a woman writer for a girls’ school – all I could say was, we need him right now. I think we need Ted Kooser, too. We need a whole lot more of Ted Kooser. This tribute volume containing pieces by writers who value Kooser deeply is a rich guide to his work and life. Though a two-time poet laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Presidential Professor Emeritus of the University of Nebraska, Kooser remains somewhat undersung. He’s a modest rural-dwelling man – uninterested in pomp, self-promotion, or flash, and his poems contain the deepest truths, perceptions, and care. They contain every human value, integrity, humor, fabulously tangible detail, and a shimmering awareness of all the connections and “coincidences” that make this life more precious. They are magical. Kudos to University of Nebraska Press for recognizing the worth of a master while he lives yet nearby. I don’t want teachers, or high-school students especially, who live in more rural, small-town environs to miss Kooser’s voice.

And thanks to any of you who’ve been reading my book picks! It’s been great fun to gather them. Thank you, Poetry Foundation, for these wonderful YPPL years!

“Another year/on the silent wheel/of the seasons/ the tide of days/coming and going…”

John Kooistra has a doctorate in philosophy, but also worked as a commercial fisherman for more than three decades in Alaska; he’s been artist-in-residence at Denali National Park. Such combinations spin magical poetry. His words radiate fortitude, elegant quiet, and meditative calm. He’s written poems to his teeth and his socks. Even when he’s writing ironically, or quizzically, the poems make you feel better about whatever you have to do: “Perhaps I should take a hint/and follow in the footsteps of the storm:/ whitewash my life, turn over a new leaf./Forget that it grows on the same old tree.” These are poems you want to copy on small cards and send to people, poems that make you calm down and smile. “…a whole life of coincidence/pushes me gently from behind…” or “This morning the phone sang./I looked at it/like a turtle had spoken.” They carry light at their ends, but also all the way through.

Of this book, Mary Karr has written, “these poems are like flowers that grow out of bomb craters, and Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishing talent to celebrate.” Kaveh Akbar has written, “…this is poetry of the highest order.” What’s so amazing about the young Abu Toha’s poems is how they feel like cleansing, refreshing tonics, invoking beauty and precious daily life, even though he lives where he was born, in Gaza, what has been described as “the world’s largest open-air prison.” These poems shimmer, without rancor or bitterness, creating a sense of space and humanity but also telling the very true story of what it is like to live in a place where massacres of innocent civilians, too often children, occur regularly and rubble from Israeli bombardment abounds: “Every day I set foot in the maze…” At an even younger age, Abu Toha founded the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library, which continues to support cultural activities. He has been a Visiting Poet at Harvard University and has since returned with his wife and three kids to Gaza, where their families remain. These poems will transport you into a realm of deepest humanity and never-ending hope. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Read an excerpt from this book!

For everyone who believes that poems do make things happen, this is an empowering collection of poems gathered by Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work collective in Northern California, on many topics of conflict and controversy. More than two thousand poems were initially submitted when the call went out (in less than two weeks – what does that say?) and mixed with pieces nominated by the poets of the collective. Whatever the moment in history, truth-seeking expression always feels redemptive. But, especially now, when democracy has been so visibly under attack and justice for all races and genders seems particularly tender and vulnerable, we need this potent and beautifully produced book. Many teachers will be grateful for the activism encouraged by widely various writers and perspectives – even teachers in Florida and Texas will be, I promise. Quoted at the front are these lines from W.H Auden’s well-known poem, “September 1, 1939” – “All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie.”

The illustrations in this poetry anthology are so gorgeous, you’ll want to paper your rooms with them. Though the title implies the book is for girls, I’ll bet anything boys will claim this book too. Editor Diana Whitney—who is also a yoga teacher in Vermont—snags readers with her stunningly honest introduction; she confesses her own hardest, growing-up secret in the second paragraph. As a queer mother of two teenage daughters, Whitney invites vulnerability and mutual care in every word she writes. Sections such as “Attitude” and “Belonging” and “Rage” will appeal to all the girls we are or remember being. The delicious poems range from Margaret Atwood to Sahar Romani, Sarah Kay to Natalie Diaz. They’re the positively contagious sorts of poems that will encourage writing in others, giving confidence along the way. And the book’s history is already delicious: it was a #1 bestseller on Amazon in the Teen/YA poetry category, and it made the Indie Bestseller list in the YA category too. Keep giving books as gifts, everybody! In one breathtaking poem, Bianca Stone describes, after much trauma and difficulty, being “prepared to do something drastic / like live and live and live.” This book helps readers want to do that even better.

Some anthologies are made of pure love; it’s palpable. Peter Kahn, a longtime English teacher and spoken word educator at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois, founded the Spoken Word Club there in 1999. To say this changed countless lives would be an understatement. His coeditors, all marvelous writers, educators, and presenters of poetry, banded together to select 76 terrific poems from club members across the years—Kahn says, “We could have included at least 500.”

That’s what poetry does: it stirs a sense of abundant life in all. In one of the numerous introductions to this book, Sully Sullivan mentions “befriending [his] bewilderment” as one of the gifts of growing up with such poetry experiences. What a great description. This is a book for teens, teachers, workshop leaders, and poetry readers of all ages. Sections include “Coming of Age,” “Monsters at Home,” and “Survival Tactics.” A different editor gracefully introduces each one.

The legendary Ashley Bryan—painter, poet, storyteller extraordinaire, resident of Little Cranberry Island, Maine, who wintered in Sugarland, Texas, with family—left the planet gently February 4, 2022, at the age of 98. Thankfully, his dozens of books survive him and will continue to bring joy to millions of readers. I recommend Words to My Life’s Song because Bryan tells the beautiful story of his own life, as he does in his last book, Infinite Hope, which records his grueling experiences in World War II. But all his books are treasures. This one focuses on finding, discovering, becoming who we are. Bryan loved random found objects, beach glass, and bits and pieces. From some of these objects, he made puppets and stained-glass windows. He felt poetry emanating from scraps, light, and the tiniest revelations, and being in his presence was a rush of fresh air. He urged children to create their “own home libraries”! (His spoken sentences all had exclamation points at the ends.) I once saw him receive standing ovations from college students, elementary school kids, and a whole bookstore of community members, all in the same day. He was tireless, funny, and perpetually welcoming to crowds of children who visited him on his island. To consider a world without him is simply impossible, so perhaps we might conjure his presence twice as much by talking even more about his books, paintings, love for poetry and Black poets wherever we can. The Ashley Bryan Center will continue in his Maine home. Please support it: visit it and spread the word!

In this marvelous, compact, first volume of poems by Emilie Lygren, a California outdoor educator who has developed outdoor science curricula for youth (the BEETLES project at the Lawrence Hall of Science) and worked as a life coach and mentor for teens, a kitchen manager, and a barista, readers find a world shimmering in beauty and possibility. Whether contemplating the daily news or rivers or mothers or circles of students really discovering the outdoors for the first time, Lygren’s poems shimmer with revelation. There is a simplicity of being in every act and day that abides and sustains all people. Soil, a fly, shadows, the ways of planting seeds—Lygren writes about her father’s tools in a poem that has made me cry so many times since first hearing it years ago in a Tassajara wilderness workshop and then seeing it years later on a page. What tools do people really need? How do people keep constructing lives they might live honorably, together? How do people keep being born to new wonder the longer they live? Lygren is a meditative poet with immense social energy: her lines inspire people to become better. They also encourage thinking of poems that may have been missed. Everyone is richer than they think they are. Give this book to people you love as well as yourself.

It’s another year, so let’s have Another World. Perhaps featuring two books from Vermont back-to-back in this column is unseemly, but celebrating the voices and visions of young people will never be unseemly. This gorgeous volume sings of inspiration and hope; it’s a new year anthem all its own. The Gengarellys have devoted themselves to working with young writers and artists of all ages for many decades. They offer after-school and summer workshops through the Poetry Studio at their home and garden in Marlboro and teach widely in schools and universities. In her poem “Blossoming Words,” Erin LeBlanc, 12, asks, “What if every flower bloomed a word? / What if each stalk was a sentence?” The poem ends, “words meant to fill a garden, / words that were always there, / waiting for a listener.” Teachers will find these poems by young writers very helpful in classrooms, triggering happy writing contagion. Ann describes a recent conversation with her grandson, in which he called her a different kind of social worker, saying, “You get people to express their emotions.” Through wide, clean pages; a large, appealing font; and many imaginative full-color works of visual art, Another World carries readers away to better places. Happy 2022!

Crews, a fine poet and teacher, appears to have a Midas touch when it comes to gathering wonderful poems and growing popular anthologies. Two months ago, more than 90,000 copies of How to Love the World were in print, and more than 50,000 had already sold. Heartening news for the world of poetry: people are loving and sharing this book, which hasn’t yet been out a year. And rightly so. After too many extremely strenuous seasons, many people apparently want and need more positivity. What finer way than to absorb wondrously inviting poems studded by “reflective pauses” inviting further thinking and personal writing. Poets include Tracy K. Smith, Joy Harjo, Ellen Bass, Ted Kooser, Amanda Gorman, Alberto Rios, and many more. The connections between these poems feel exquisitely right. This book is needed right now. As with Crews’s previous popular anthology, Healing the Divide, also featured as an earlier YPPL book pick, this volume has an extremely pleasing smaller-size, tuckable-flaps, velveteen physicality. In a melodious foreword, Ross Gay writes, “Witnessing how we are loved and how we love makes the world. In his superb introduction, “The Necessity of Joy,” Crews discusses “soul time” and its essential presence. How to Love the World is for everyone—adolescents, teens, adults—who welcomes greater fullness of joy and wholeness of days.