Books like The carrying by Ada Limón

Rupi Kaur’s second poetry collection, *The Sun and Her Flowers*, explores themes of growth, healing, and self‑discovery through raw, personal verses about love, loss, and renewal.

In *blud*, poet Rachel McKibbens weaves a lyrical world of cultural brujeria, sacrilegious litanies, and ritualized births, where letters from hearts and brains intertwine and illuminate the human experience.

Lucille Clifton’s celebrated collection, Good Woman, assembles her first four poetry works and a powerful memoir, offering a vivid portrait of African‑American womanhood and resilience.

Mary Oliver’s Devotions compiles more than 200 poems spanning five decades, from her first book in 1963 to the 2015 collection Felicity.

"The poems in Daisy Fried's first collection of poetry read like tough, urban fables. Formally innovative and thematically challenging, these poems traverse the geography of sex and teenage initiation rights . . . These poems resist being pinned down. They roam the pages in a kind of tight, disruptive free verse." —Ploughshares

A bold exploration of pregnancy, childbirth, and artistic expression through verse, prose, and dialogue.

"From the celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, a poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark. The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence--so clear and pared-down, they become universal. From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society's expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward's bone resonate to the core of what it means to be human."--

Ada Limón's "Lucky Wreck" is a vibrant collection of contemporary poems that weave personal experience, emotional honesty, and cultural reflection into vivid, rhythmic verses.

Anjail Rashida Ahmad's powerful exploration of African American women's heritage and pride in language and tradition.

Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things is a lyrical exploration of life’s chaotic, exhilarating journey and the pursuit of something disorderly yet marvelous.