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Celebrate National Poetry Month

To celebrate National Poetry Month, and with a nod to Women's History Month in March, we asked poet Angie Mason to look through our Library's collection and pick out some favorites. She wrote: "Our list this year is highlighting poetry collections that give voice to strong women writers. As a poet and avid poetry reader, I am excited to compile this list of a few female poetry collections that have inspired me. Beyond the following books in our Library, the Poetry Foundation is also a great resource to find poems and information about poets. Check out their website to read more great poetry."

Women in Praise of the Sacred by Jane Hirshfield, editor
Call Number: PN6109.9 .W65 1995x
Publication Date: 1995

This March, our college was honored to welcome poet/legend Jane Hirshfield to campus through the Francis X. Shea Memorial Lecture endowment. Hirshfield, who is not only an award winning poet, essayist, and translator, is also the editor of two poetry anthologies that showcase the work of women poets. Our library has both of these works in our collection. Featured here, Women in Praise of the Sacred: Forty-Three Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women includes the work of 70 poets from many cultures, spiritual traditions, and social classes.

American Primitive by Mary Oliver
Call Number: PS3565.L5 A66 1983
Publication Date: 1983

When I heard the news that Mary Oliver passed in January, my heart sank. Mary Oliver was known for her distinct style of writing concise observations
of the natural world. Her poetry and essays are much more than just records or daily musings of egrets and bobcats; through writing about nature she explored our own shared humanity and spirituality. Her prolific career spanned more than five decades. We have a large collection of her work in our library including her Pulitzer Prize winning collection American Primitive. This was my first introduction to her work and the collection I often come back to.

Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
Call Number: PS3570.R433 N38 2007
Publication Date: 2007

Native Guard addresses the complex history of the American South, offering a lyrical tribute to the Native Guard, one of the first black regiments in service during the Civil War. It also pays tribute to the author's mother and her illegal interracial marriage. Natasha Trethewey was the 19th Poet Laureate of the US. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard in 2007. The majority of poems in this collection are written within the constraints of fixed forms ranging from villanelle to blues poems. The title poem itself is written as an impressive ten stanza sonnet sequence.

To Sing along the Way by Joyce Sutphen, Thom Tammaro, & Connie Wanek, editors
Call Number: PS571.M6 T6 2006
Publication Date: 2006

The first historical and contemporary anthology of Minnesota women poets, this anthology is edited by three prize-winning poets. Poems included range from the earliest poetry in Minnesota—oral song-poems of Ojibwe women—through the sounds and rhythms of early-twentieth-century formalism and contemporary free verse. Minnesota has a long and rich literary history. To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present is a poetry anthology that celebrates the voices of over 100 Minnesotan women writers.

When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz
Call Number: PS3604.I186 W47 2012
Publication Date: 2012

In When My Brother Was An Aztec, Natalie Diaz examines memory’s role in human identity. Each section filters memory through specific individuals and settings. The first concentrates on a diabetic grandmother without legs and the landscape, tangible and intangible, of a Native American reservation. The second engages a brother’s strife with drug-use and his unraveling of the family and the home. The third grapples with war as a character and its tattering of individuals, families, and communities. Bigotry against Native Americans is confronted throughout the collection, and the speaker’s wrestling with identity is carefully woven into each poem. When my brother was an Aztec is Diaz’s debut poetry collection. The poems in this collection are gritty and mythical. The intensity of her imagery cascades throughout the collection and is equally balanced with beauty.

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