Metropolitan Library System

"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices." In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist...

This stunning story of the author's struggle to break free of her strict Rastafarian upbringing ruled by a father whose rigid beliefs, rage and paranoia led to violence shows how found her own power and provides a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we know little about.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) wrote short, often-enigmatic poems that are widely anthologized, quoted, and read by students of every age. Yet, as widely known as her poetry is, Dickinson as a person is considered to have been an inscrutable recluse-a silent figure who wore only white, wrote in secret, never left her Amherst, Massachusetts, home, and had no interest in sharing her poetry with others. In Becoming Emily, young readers will learn how-while...

"Explores Sylvia Plath's enduring interest and active practice in mysticism and the occult from childhood until her tragic death in 1963"--

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, this is...

"Scandal and pathos abound" (The New Yorker) in this riveting account of the mother and daughter who brought Emily Dickinson's genius to light.

Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography • Finalist for the Plutarch Award

Despite Emily Dickinson's renown, the story of the two women most responsible for her initial posthumous publication—Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter, Millicent

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"A lyrical picture book biography about American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay's childhood and the two sisters who inspired her Good things come in threes, like peas like wishes like sisters. Vincent-American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay-began writing and publishing poetry as a child. She grew up in coastal Maine with her two sisters and plenty of books, music, and nature, but often without parents-her father left home when they were young, and her...

"Notes on shapeshifting is an ode to existing in physical form, fully aware of the changing energy that dlows through every aspect of it. You are invited to travel through various states; pure infatuation to heartbreak, confidence to defeat, from a skepticism for living to a full-on trust in it. This collection yearns to soothe and arouse."--From back of book.