Word Up! Poetry 4 Teens

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Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Latino in the United States
(J 468 CAR) 136p MS/HS
“A low-income prodigy child caught in the American crossfire.”

Foolish/Unfoolish: Reflections on Love
(782.4216 ASH 2002) 98p HS
“When I look into your eyes/ I still get butterflies.”

Stopping for Death: Poems of Death & Loss
(808.81 DUF) 124p HS
“They died because words they had spoken returned always homeless to them.”

Earth-Shattering Poems
(808.81 EAR) 126p HS
“I came back from the funeral and crawled/ around the apartment, crying hard/ searching for my wife’s hair.”

What Have You Lost
(808.81 NYE) 205p MS/HS
“. . . And we become strangers in our own home.”

Pierced By a Ray of Sun: Poems About the Times We Feel Alone
(808.81 PIE) 105p MS/HS
“The one-armed boy/ has taught himself to play catch.”

Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation
(808.81 RIS 2003) 173p HS
“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”

Ten Poems to Set You Free
(808.8104 HOU 2003) 142p HS
These poems inspire you to claim the life that is truly yours.

City of One: Young Writers Speak to the World
(810.8 CIT 2004) 239p MS/HS
“A little girl asks me if I speak Tarzan language.”

Teen Ink: Written in the Dirt
(810.8 TEE 2004) 393p MS/HS
A collection of short stories, poetry, art, & photography.

The World According to Dog...
(810.8036 WOR 2003) 71p MS/HS
"This is how it is with love./ Once invited,/ it steps in gently,/ circles twice,/ and takes up as much space/ as you will give it."

Shooting the Rat: Stories & Poems by Outstanding High School Writers
(810.8092 SHO) 280p HS
Poems and stories about all the things teens think & write about…”I am an expert/ on the way your hair curls…”

You Remind Me of You: A Poetry Memoir
(811 COR) 123p HS
“Now I’m wondering who let me near you in the first place, why no one noticed me careening towards you and pulled you out of harm’s way for a talk.”

Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?
(811 FIS 2003) 61p HS
“In matters of the heart there seem to be only/ these two extremes for me, the day or the night,/ the sunshine or the rain. Pleasure or the pain.”

19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East
(811 NYE) 142p MS/HS
“I’m not interested in/ who suffered the most/ I’m interested in/ people getting over it.”

The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip-Hop & the Poetry of a New Generation
(811 SPO 2003) 241p HS
This volume brings to life the written and performed works of more than 40 of the most influential slam, hip hop, performance art and contemporary poets in the world today.

Bend, Don’t Shatter: Poets on the Beginning of Desire
(811.008 BEN 2004) 111p HS
“I wear Jim Morrison t-shirts/ spend my allowance on baseball cards/ and wish every night/ that when I wake/ I’ll be looking down at a boy’s body/ instead of mine.”

Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
(811.008 POE 2003) 323p HS
A dazzling new anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.

Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems...
(811.008 RED) 140p MS/HS
"I'm a grafted flower that didn't/ take, a Mexican without being one,/ an American without feeling like one…."

Love: Selected Poems
(811.52 CUM) HS
“...my blood approves,/ and kisses are a far better fate/ than wisdom.”

Slow Dance Heartbreak Blues
(811.54 ADO) 54p MS/HS
“You will live in a swamp of defeat and self-pity.”

Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe
(811.54 ALO) 514p HS
“And movie stars/ continue to take precedence/ over the homeless/ and politicians’/ personal lives/ continue/ to take precedence/ over justice.”

Poems From Homeroom: A Writer’s Place to Start
(811.54 APP) 114p MS/HS
"Poetry is the home for all my yearnings/ each poem a separate room/ where wandering words/ find a cool bed, a bowl of soup…."

Buried Alive: The Elements of Love
(811.54 FLE) 46p MS/HS
“After the beach/ your shoulder tastes salty...”

Hoofprints: Horse Poems
(811.54 HAA) 208p MS/HS
She drives the continents apart./ She heats and wets and dries and cools the land,/ Makes winter, summer, rainfall, grass.”

Laughing Out Loud I Fly: Poems in English and Spanish
(J SPA BILINGUAL 811.54 HER) MS/HS
“Soy una caricatura de chango o un tamal chiloso, loco con parches remendados.”

I Just Hope It’s Lethal: Poems of Sadness, Madness & Joy
(811.54 IJU) 190p HS
“To the Internet/ I am a screen name and a password,/ neither of which is My Name.”

Listen Up! Spoken Word Poetry
(811.54 LIS) 197p HS
“Piece by piece they shipped my body to this country.”

The Inner City Mother Goose
(811.54 MER) 70p MS/HS
“Just for fun/ Plunge the knife/ And cut/ And run….”

My Own True Name
(811.54 MOR) 81p HS
“I am embarrassed/ almost every day/ why people so mean….”

Movin’: Teen Poets Take Voice
(811.54 MOV) 52p MS/HS
“They're gatherers of stories,/ picking up the spit of kings.”

Here in Harlem: Poems in Many Voices
(811.54 MYE) 88p MS/HS
"I'd love to live on Sugar Hill/ Be as rich as I could be/ Then all the folks from down the way/ Would have to envy me/ I'd stick my hincty pinky out/ Put my hincty nose in the air/ Get a hincty chauffeur to drive my car/ And a white girl to do my hair."

A Maze Me: Poems for Girls
(811.54 NYE) 118p MS/HS
“A lady was quoted in the newspaper./ ‘It is not so hard to feel wise./ Just think of something dumb you could say,/ then don’t say it.’”

The Pain Tree & Other Teenage Angst-Ridden Poetry
(811.54 PAI) 62p HS
“Can’t you feel it?/ It hurts so bad!”

The Rose That Grew From Concrete
(811.54 SHA) 149p HS
“I Hope I Die For A Principle/ or A Belief that I had Lived 4.”

Slam
(811.54 SLA) 157p HS
“I am different from you/ And it scares you.”

The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems
(811.54 STA) 268p HS
“So, the world happens twice/ once what we see it as/ second it legends itself/ deep, the way it is.”

Angst!: Teen Verses From the Edge!
(811.6 ANG) 133p HS
“I want to scratch your eyes out with my fingernails,/ Or make you wish you were dead, if killing you fails.”

Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by 20th Century American Art
(811.6 HEA) 80p MS/HS
“...he looked/ at me like I was crazy, scrambled to his feet & ran.”

I Don’t Want to Be Crazy
(811.6 SCH) 280p HS
“I have resigned myself/ to the fact that I have gone insane.”

Blushing: Expressions of Love in Poems and Letters
(821.008 JAN 2004) 98p HS
This collection of 59 poems is divided into five sections: the beginning of love, in love, alone in love, the end of love, and remembering love.

MS = Most appropriate for middle schoolers
MS/HS = Most appropriate for middle/high schoolers
HS = Most appropriate for high schoolers

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