Craig Morgan Teicher

April always brings some of the years' biggest poetry collections. So as it wraps up, we wanted to bring you two favorites — retrospective collections from Marie Howe and Jean Valentine.

New collections The Gone Thing, Silver and Modern Poetry offer, if not a solution to trying times in America, then a kind of truth-telling companion, a mirror with a real person on both sides of it.

Here are three of the first poetry collections to register the still-unfolding social and physical fallout of the pandemic and Trump-era politics.

The poet laureate's collection tells a tale of a fierce and ongoing fight for sovereignty, integrity, and basic humanity. It's a plea that Americans take responsibility for what's done in our names.

Though it took poet Carolyn Forché half a lifetime to fully share in a memoir what she saw during her time in El Salvador in the 1970s and the lessons learned, now is precisely when we need to see it.

As he approaches his 100th birthday, the legendary Beat poet and publisher has a new book. Billed as his "literary last will and testament," Little Boy is part memoir, part rambling free-association.

At her best, Nomi Stone is able to make an anthropological excavation into something beautiful and haunting, laced with double meanings. But at times she stands in her own way, obscuring our view.

This year, says critic Craig Morgan Teicher, America's poets are stepping up and expressing their faith in the capacity of words to overcome barriers, find compromise, and speak truth.

Many of the books of poems coming out this year are sad, but also powerful; full of poets processing their lives, looking into pains both personal and political through the cracked glass of poetry.

2017 is turning out to be a year of big change. Critic Craig Teicher highlights some of the poetry that can help guide readers through it.