Washoe County Library System

The epic poem recounting the experiences of Odysseus during his return from the Trojan War. A new translation of the epic poem, and the first by a woman, brings alive Homer's tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic, and provides an introductory overview of the poem's major themes, controversial origin, and the scope of its influence. A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 "Wilson’s language is fresh, unpretentious and lean…It is rare to find...

A collection of poems reflects the experiences of Asian Americans and the problem of creating an Asian American identity while influenced by Westerners' ideas about Asians. A major achievement by Monica Youn, “one of the most consistently innovative poets working today” (NPR). “Where are you from . . . ? No―where are you from from?” It’s a question every Asian American gets asked as part of an incessant chorus saying you’ll never belong...

"Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”&#٬٢٠١٤؛and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung...

"A queer, political, and feminist collection guided by self-reflection. The poems range from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between. One of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades, Andrea Gibson's trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display in You Better...

"Inspired by classical Chinese hermit-poets, David Budbill dispatches poems from his remote Vermont hermitage, Judevine Mountain, but cannot escape the complications and struggles of a modern existence. Forthrightly, his poems confront loneliness, mortality, and political outrage with humor and keen insight."--BOOK JACKET.

Long recognized as a masterpiece of modern American poetry, William Carlos Williams' Paterson is one man's testament and vision, "a humanist manifesto enacted in five books, a grammar to help us to live" (Denis Donoghue). Paterson is both a place - the New Jersey city near which Williams lived - and a man: the symbolic figure in whom the person (the poet's own life) and the public (the history of the region) are combined. Originally four books (published...

A boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale are only two of the characters in a collection of humorous poetry illustrated with the author's own drawings. Come in - for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters...

Thinker isn't just an average puppy--he's a poet. So is his owner, Jace. Together they turn the world around them into verse. here's just one problem: Thinker has to keep quiet in public, and he can't go to school with Jace. That is, until Pets' Day. But when Thinker is allowed into the classroom at last, he finds it hard to keep his true identity a secret...

A collection of haunting lyricism that evokes the beauty and hardship of the rural South. In this incandescent, profound, and accessible collection, beloved and award-winning poet, novelist, and short-story writer Ron Rash vividly channels the rhythms of life in Appalachia, deftly capturing the panoply of individuals who are its heart and soul men and women inured to misfortune and hard times yet defined by tremendous fortitude, resilience, and a...

"Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd’s grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa—she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience. With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa’s exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the...