Poetry Recommendations // A RAD Reading Challenge

A few weeks ago, I shared the first ever (!!) RAD Reading Challenge and it was met with such an enthusiastic response! This is how I know I’ve found my people on this crazy internet, forreal. Thank you all for joining in on the fun this year— I’m so looking forward to seeing what you read for the challenge!

I wanted to share posts over the next few months with recommendations for each prompt, suggestions I’ve crowdsourced on Instagram, and my own plan for what I’ll be reading.

ps— I know many people are intimidated by poetry, but you don’t need to be! I encourage you to read several of the following poets/books of poetry so you can see what styles you like best. Some are more flowery (Emily Dickinson), some are more poignant (Mary Oliver), some are really down to earth and funny (Billy Collins), some are really spiritual (Ted Loder, Hafez), some are really modern (Rupi Kaur, Cleo Wade), etc. I guarantee you can find something you love in the poetry world —don’t give up!

Here’s the first post — all about poetry!

(there are affiliate links here, HOLLA!)

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Poets + Poetry Books I’ve Read:

• Mary Oliver // New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 (review); Vol. 2 (review); A Thousand Mornings (review); Felicity (review)

• Jane Hirshfield // After (review)

• Wendell Berry // Leavings (review); A Timbered Choir (review); A Small Porch (review); This Day: New and Selected Sabbath Poems 1979-2012 (review) — PS: (I wrote a post on where to start reading Berry here!)

• Ted Loder // Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle (review)

• Emily Dickinson // Selected Poems (review)

• Anne Poarch // Flight: Of Butterflies and Robins and Other Winged Dreams (review)

• Billy Collins // The Trouble with Poetry - and Other Poems (review)

• T.S. Eliot // The Waste Land and Other Poems

• Rainer Maria Rilke // Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (review)

• T.J. Jarrett // Zion (review)

• Jane Kenyon // Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (review)

• Rupi Kaur // Milk and Honey (review); The Sun and Her Flowers (review)

• Walt Whitman // Song of Myself (review)

• Hafez // I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (review)

• Langston Hughes // Selected Poems (review)

• Shel Silverstein // A Light in the Attic

• Gaby Compres // A Song of Bravery

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Recommendations from bookstagram:

• Billy Collins

• Mary Oliver

• Carl Sandberg

• Emily Dickinson

• Edna St. Vincent Millay

• Shel Silverstein

• Nikita Gill

• Sarah Kay

• Sonia Sanchez

• June Jordan

• Nikki Giovanni

• Yrsa Daley Ward

• Seamus Heaney

• e.e. cummings

• Cleo Wade

• Morgan Harper Nichols

• Ted Loder

• Sylvia Plath

• Sid Miller

• Rudy Francisco

• Cody McClendon

• John Donne

• Jeffrey McDaniel

• Jane Kenyon

• Hafiz

• Wendell Berry (I wrote a post on where to start reading Berry here!)

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Poetry on My List to Read This Year:

• Yung Pueblo // Inward (I think this is going to be my pick for the challenge!)

• Mary Oliver // Thirst; Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

• Jimmy Carter // Always a Reckoning and Other Poems

• Eavan Boland // The Lost Land

• Billy Collins // Sailing Alone Around the Room

• The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

• The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

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