Outside of a Dog, #40

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx.

April is National Poetry Month, and we’re very excited about introducing patrons to the best modern and classic poetry we know. The Academy of American Poets offers lots of suggestions on how to spread the word – why not try Poem In Your Pocket or get e-mailed a new poem each day of April? Or, check out the blog at Gotta Book where writer and librarian Gregory K. will post a new, unpublished poem each day!

Here, some of our favorite poetry books:

Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein

Silverstein has always been great fun to read, from “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout (Would Not Take the Garbage Out)” to “Sick,” kids and adults alike will laugh at the poems and drawings in his collections of poems; he also wrote “The Giving Tree.”

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Also available in audio, read by the author: BKD JFic 811 S WCV

The New Kid on the Block – Jack Prelutsky

Another poet specializing in fun for kids, this book features the poem “Boing! Boing! Squeak!” – the tale of a bouncing mouse, and the title poem, “The New Kid on the Block,” which ends not at all how you’d expect.

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The Waste Land and Other Poems – T.S. Eliot

While Eliot’s personal life is full of drama, his poems were usually long, twisting affairs and thoughts on life both in the city and in his imagination. The Waste Land is his best known offering, and reading it is a delight of mythologies and references.

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Don’t You Turn Back; Poems – Langston Hughes

Famous for being part of the amazing Harlem Renaissance, Hughes was an African-American poet whose work sounds like jazz riffs on a piano. He wrote about music and life and growing up black in Harlem, and each poem rolls and rocks with a lyrical style all his own.

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The Oxford Book of American Poetry – David Lehman (ed.)

If you’d like to sample different poets and styles, try this edition. Included are e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, and this blogger’s favorite, Wallace Stevens.

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