2023 Featured Fall Books List
Our partners, sponsors, and advertisers present some of their new poetry titles to help celebrate fall.
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Survivor’s Notebook
by Dan O’Brien
Acre Books
September 2023, Paperback, $17
A powerful companion to 2021’s Our Cancers, this prose-poem sequence is truly a survivor’s notebook, using photos and the tools of memoir to evoke the ways in which disaster can constellate our past, present, and future.
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Dual
by Matthew Minicucci
Acre Books
October 2023, Paperback, $17
In his fourth poetry collection, Matthew Minicucci examines masculinity and gun violence as he brings to life the grammatical concept of the dual, a number that is neither singular nor plural.
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Beautiful Sad Eyes, Weary Waiting for Love
by r.h. Sin, Robert Drake
Andrews McMeel Publishing
October 2023, Paperback, $24.99
A two-book collection from best-selling powerhouse poets r.h. Sin and Robert M. Drake that explores the duality of the heart, which clings to darkness while fighting to feel the light.
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Daughter: The Soul Journey of a Black Woman in America Having a Human Experience
by Ebonee Davis
Andrews McMeel Publishing
October 2023, Paperback, $16.99
Ebonee Davis’s debut collection is a must-read for anyone having a uniquely human experience in an ever-devolving world. It is a powerful reminder that the journey to true freedom must always begin with the journey within.
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Survival Takes a Wild Imagination
by Fariha Róisín
Andrews McMeel Publishing
October 2023, Paperback, $16.99
Poet and activist Fariha Róisín writes, prays, claws, and scratches her way out of the grips of generational trauma on the search for the freedom her mother never received and the kindness she couldn’t give.
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The Way Forward
by Yung Pueblo
Andrews McMeel Publishing
October 2023, Paperback, $16.99
In this final installment of his poetic trilogy, #1 New York Times bestselling poet Yung Pueblo expands upon favorite themes while guiding readers further, toward a life lived authentically, intuitively, and in harmony with others.
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Words of a Goat Princess
by Jessie Reyez
Andrews McMeel Publishing
October 2023, Paperback, $16.99
A moving poetic debut from singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez, Words of a Goat Princess is everything you love about Jessie’s work—her rawness, her love affair with the ugly truths about humanity, and much more.
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The Letters I Will Never Send
by Isabella Dorta
Andrews McMeel Publishing
November 2023, Paperback, $16.99
TikTok poet Isabella Dorta urges you to leave nothing unsaid and to find comfort in more than one hundred moving poems on love, heartbreak, mental health, and self-discovery, written in the form of confessional letters.
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Love & Misadventure, 10th anniversary ed.
by Lang Leav
Andrews McMeel Publishing
November 2023, Hardcover, $24.99
An elegant hardcover collector’s edition celebrating the tenth anniversary of Lang Leav’s best-selling Love & Misadventure. Features a special foreword by the author, highly personal annotations, newly colored artworks, and a ribbon marker.
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People Not Things: Love Poems and Paintings for Humanity
by Genesis Be
Andrews McMeel Publishing
November 2023, Paperback, $16.99
Poignant and moving, this honest debut collection of poetry and paintings from artist and activist Genesis Be bravely examines what it means to stay hopeful during the arduous journey to freedom.
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Discordant
by Richard Hamilton
Autumn House Press
September 2023, Paperback, $16.95; e-Book, $15
“Richard Hamilton’s Discordant is a searing examination of injustice, from criticisms of the U.S. military-industrial complex and its failing health care system to multilayered observations of marginalization through the lenses of race, class, gender, and sexuality.”
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Rock Stars
by Matt Mason
Button Poetry
September 2023, Paperback, e-Book, and Audiobook, $18
An ode and ovation to what our ears taught us before we knew what to say, Matt Mason’s Rock Stars riffs on music, poetry, and sports, taking us on the coming-of-age road trip of a lifetime.
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Quiet Armor
by Stevie Edwards
Curbstone Books
October 2023, Paperback, $18
Quiet Armor, the third full-length collection from poet Stevie Edwards, examines how capitalism and patriarchy impact romantic relationships and, more broadly, intimacy, showing us not only desperate battles but also healing embraces.
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Dirt Songs
by Kari Gunter-Seymour
Eastover Press
February 2023, Paperback, $19.99
Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour’s collection of poems, Dirt Songs, provides a uniquely intimate look at landscape and family generated from within Appalachia, recognizing that one story cannot accurately represent a region or its people.
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Fixer
by Edgar Kunz
Ecco
August 2023, Paperback, $17.99
From the award-winning author of Tap Out, Edgar Kunz’s sophomore poetry collection rolls up its sleeves to reckon with the legacies of labor and the question of worth in a system built on exploitation.
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In Gorgeous Display
by Ugochukwu Damian Okpara
Fordham University Press
September 2023, Paperback, $16.95
A poignant exploration of queer identity, exile, and resilience and a tribute to victims of anti-queer violence, this collection unveils pain, hope, and the quest for self-reclamation amidst displacement. It is a journey through soulful poetic brilliance.
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Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery
by Pamela Sneed
Fordham University Press
September 2023, Paperback, $16.95
First published in 1998, Pamela Sneed’s provocative debut collection dives deep into enslavement, sexuality, and trauma. Drawing parallels to Harriet Tubman’s journey, these poems offer a powerful cry for freedom, love, and justice
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Papi Pichón
by Dimitri Reyes
Get Fresh Publishing
July 2023, Paperback, $18
Dimitri Reyes’s first collection, Papi Pichón, is an ars poetica response to the Caribbean paradox wherein using words as categorically simple as “Puerto Rican,” in an attempt to identify the complex amalgamations of African, Indigenous, Spanish, and beyond, can only be described fully through myth. The cultural concepts that transcend history and lineage become mythology. Whether pigeon, child, abolitionist, artist, ghost, or thought, in one word, Papi Pichón is spirit—the guide that brings us all closer together.
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A Scrap in the Blessings Jar
by David Bottoms
LSU Press
October 2023, Hardcover, $50; Paperback, $24.95; e-Book, $19.95
At once a tale of cultural exile and familial loyalty, and an unflinching look at regional shame that doubles as a love story, all expressed with the intimate voice and vision of Rodney Jones.
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Old Gods: Poems
by Clifford Brooks
Mercer University Press
September 2023, Paperback, $20
Through the redemptive power of words, Clifford Brooks confronts personal battles of addiction, autism, heartbreak, otherness, anxiety, and escapism through journey poems. Bolstered by faith, family, friends, and vocation, the poet’s telling is ordered and meticulous.
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Bloodroot: Poems
by Bill King
Mercer University Press
October 2023, Paperback, $20
In his first full-length collection, Bill King articulates a life grounded in the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains. By turns, his poems offer a language for how to love a world we must, ultimately, leave.
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Happy Neighborhood: Essays and Poems
by Thomas Hallock
Mercer University Press
October 2023, Paperback, $22
These thoughtful, carefully crafted meditations seek to define happiness at home. Although seemingly content, based on the title, the author of this collection candidly confronts the challenges he has faced as a father, spouse, and son.
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Where Here Is Hard to Say: Poems
by Gordon Johnston
Mercer University Press
October 2023, Paperback, $20
These poems engage with the losses and renewals of life—confronting the mortality of friends and parents, raising children, wrestling with depression, and trying to find stable footing in midlife as the ecstatic alternates with the awful.
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I Love Information: Poems
by Courtney Bush
Milkweed Press
September 2023, Paperback, $16
“Winner of the National Poetry Series, Courtney Bush renders the bent and bendable logics of friendship, work, art, and love with startling wit. This is an amazing book.” —Anselm Berrigan
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Time Without Keys
by Ida Vitale
translated by Sarah Pollack
New Directions
September 2023, Paperback, $18.95
A landmark collection by one of Latin America’s most important living writers, Time Without Keys, translated by Sarah Pollack, is the first volume of Vitale’s illustrious poetry to appear in the U.S.—and just in time for her hundredth birthday.
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Sex Depression Animals
by Mag Gabbert
The Ohio State University Press
March 2023, Paperback, $16.95
In Sex Depression Animals, Mag Gabbert redefines the bestiary in fiery, insistent, and resistant terms. These poems recast the traumas of her adolescence while charting new paths toward linguistic and bodily autonomy as an adult.
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Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States
edited by Luisa A. Igloria and Aileen Cassinetto
Paloma Press
September 2023, Paperback, $20
Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States is offered as a companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), and an additional opportunity to participate in urgent conversations about environmental justice.
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Master
by Simon Shieh
Sarabande Books
September 2023, Paperback, $17.95
Selected by Terrance Hayes as the winner of the 2022 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, Master is a stark, surreal, and imagistic reckoning with a traumatic past.
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Poems for the Lord
by Tony DeStefano
Self-published
June 2023, Paperback, $9.95
Tony DeStefano was first and foremost a songwriter. In order to write better songs he studied poetic technique. And so he fell in love with poetry. This chapbook consists of eighteen poems dedicated to his faith.
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Leaning Toward Light
edited by Tess Taylor
Storey Publishing
August 2023, Hardcover, $22
This beautiful poetry anthology offers a warm, inviting selection of poems from a wide range of voices that speak to the collective urge to grow, tend, and heal—an evocative celebration of our connection to the green world.
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The Wonder of Small Things
by James Crews
Storey Publishing
September 2023, Paperback, $14.99
The editor of the best-selling poetry anthologies How to Love the World and The Path to Kindness presents a collection of highly accessible, uplifting poetry celebrating the small wonders and peaceful moments of everyday life.
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some blue, a little spur
by Kris Falcon
UnCollected Press
April 2023, Paperback, $22.90
In floating night rooms, in untethered cities, Kris Falcon's poems construct, line by line, an architecture of subjective states of singularly detailed, melancholy beauty.
— Amy England, author of Rooms Colors Dreams
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Yaguareté White
by Diego Báez
University of Arizona Press
February 2024, Paperback, $17.95
Yaguareté White is a lyrical exploration of Paraguayan whiteness, or white Latinidad, and what it means to see through a “colored” whiteness, with all of its tangled contradictions.
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Black Pastoral: Poems
by Ariana Benson
University of Georgia Press
September 2023, Paperback, $21.95
Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winner, Black Pastoral illustrates the beauty inherent to Blackness, to nature, and to the remarkable relationship they share. Ariana Benson meditates upon the violence and tenderness that simultaneously characterize this entangling.
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Wrack Line
by M. W. Jaeggle
University of Regina Press
September 2023, Paperback, $16.95
Like the coastal zone where high tides deposit debris, Wrack Line traces loss, guilt, and subsequent loneliness while exploring the regenerative possibilities of language, memory, and land.
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Selected Poems
by Thomas Hardy
edited by David Bromwich
Yale University Press
September 2023, Hardcover, $45
A generous selection of poems by a major Victorian writer, Thomas Hardy, a virtuoso of traditional forms who came to be recognized as a uniquely inventive and original voice in modern poetry.
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How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems
by Serhiy Zhadan
translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
Yale University Press
October 2023, Paperback, $18
Forged entirely in wartime, the newest collection of poetry from writer-activist Serhiy Zhadan is an homage to the Ukrainian people and a searing testament to poetry’s power to define and defy injustice.
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