Books like The Complete Poems

Okay, technically, this is not a book. But it is the greatest work in the English language. When I do public speaking, I like to say my ” favorite mystery is Scandinavian.” Everyone nods. “There’s a questionable murder to begin, then a suicide, an attempted kidnapping, and a big fight when the two main characters die.” People nod again. “It’s called Hamlet. Have you ever heard of it?” And everyone laughs. 

I then ask the question: what is the difference between a mystery and a thriller? I believe in a mystery the protagonist is ahead of the reader. (Think classic detective novels such as The Big Sleep). But in a thriller, the audience is ahead of the protagonist. (Think a movie such as Wait Until Dark). In Hamlet, we have both. The first half is a mystery. Was his father really murdered? But in the crucial midpoint,… show more.

I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.

I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.  

Told from a total of six perspectives, this book begins with the single most amazing prologue I’ve ever read. We learn that the clairvoyant family members of the FMC have predicted her whole life that one day, she will kill her true love. And it just so happens that a relative has come for a visit and immediately announces that this is the year the FMC will fall in love.

It’s so freaking good!

Of course watching that unfold from both the FMC and the MMC’s POVs kept me flipping pages fast, but I also enjoyed the other friendships, struggles, and romances happening in the other POVs. A solid multi-POV series I frequently recommend!

There has to be a Greek or Roman classic on this list if it’s going to feel like dark academia. Homer’s Iliad is great, but I went off the beaten path. I read this collection of dialogues in college, and my favorite is definitely the Phaedo, which recounts Socrates’ death. It’s short, dynamic, and easy to follow. Some philosophy is tough for non-philosophers to wrap their heads around, but Plato’s dialogue style of writing and Socrates’ clear arguments make it easier.

I’m always struck by the contentment Socrates finds, even though his death is unjust. I’ve never forgotten some of the things he says to his friends at the end.

I love this book because it teaches that real healing starts from within. This book doesn’t sugarcoat the work required to find your truest self; it’s about diving deep, stripping away the nonsense, and facing yourself head-on.

If you want real change, you’ve got to go inward, confront who you are, and do the work to heal. This book doesn’t just talk about it—it shows you how to get there.

This anthology is as powerful as it is still necessary: beware. Some pieces may be triggering, but they raised my awareness and empathy. These collected poems from writers across the globe declare one common theme: resistance. By exploring sexual assault and violence in their work, each writer resists the patriarchal systems of power that continue to support a misogynist justice system that supports abusers. In doing so, they reclaim their power and their voice. Resistance underscores the validity of all women’s experiences, and the importance of dignifying such experiences in voice, however that may sound. Because once survivors speak out and disrupt their pain, there is no telling what else they can do.

Westlake, a poet of Native Hawaiian ancestry, incorporates influences from Chinese Taoist and Japanese haiku poetry, Dada concrete poetry, the writings of Kerouac and Bukowski, as well as local pidgin and Hawaiian literary traditions. Westlake’s editor and friend Richard Hamasaki writes that the early poems are “calm, contemplative, and serene, often playful, celebratory”—humans interacting with nature, from rain, moonlight, and mountains, to bugs, frogs, and dandelions: “Looks of disbelief: / I’m on my knees / Washing a rock.” The later poems are political: “Westlake blasts away at Waikiki’s rampant tourism and American materialism, which replaced the native culture in his native land. He wonders, “how we spose / feel Hawaiian anymoa / barefeet buying smokes / in da seven eleven stoa ...?”

A bracing slap to the face, this book. Or maybe a punch to the gut. The conceit is the series of portraits of hoarders based on the reality show of the same name, and the recipe is to combine their testimonials—“I save old soda cans and turn the tin snips into flowers,” say, or “I want desperately to change”—with lists of objects, described as though in a slow camera pan across a filthy room. But the alchemy is the way Durbin mashes the two together, not quite at random but not correctly either. It’s a harrowing litany of fragments, so specific that the unspoken point is all too clear: what’s broken is much bigger than any of these individual people or things.

This is one of those gems that can easily get lost in the literary shuffle. Poet-teacher John Fox gets into the craft of writing poetry in Finding What You Didn’t Lose, but it’s not one of those dry books that will get you all tangled up worrying about your iambic pentameters. Instead, he takes you on a beautiful journey, showing how such useful tools as imagery, sound, metaphor, and rhythm can help you express yourself. Quotes and poetry excerpts round out the rich content of this book.

I love the simplicity of the language and how close the poet feels to the natural world. In her plainspoken language, Oliver’s poems transport us through nature and, by the way, teach us what it is to be human. Herons, sparrows, owls, and kingfishers flit across the pages in meditations on love, artistry, and impermanence.

It is the smallest element that counts the most in Oliver’s poems because it contains so much in so little, stripping the poet’s and our powers of observation down to an essential moment. Who doesn’t love Mary Oliver’s work?