Look, it’s happened to all of us: Late one night, you’re on the couch, an overwhelming menu of Netflix shows radiates unwatched on the screen, and you snatch up a handheld repository of short, attention-grabbing items.
A poetry collection.
That could happen, right? Instead of pawing for your doomscrolling device, you could instead pick up a collection of poems, each one a distillation of thought, feeling and emotion.
Related: Victoria Chang describes the loss at the heart of ‘Tree of Knowledge’
A book of poems may not be as instantly gratifying as a video of a yawning kitten napping next to a protective beagle, but poetry contains the power to reach into your soul and connect you with the universe and its vast constellation of people and places, lyrics and laments, emotions and aspirations.
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So nobody is telling you to get rid of your phone — there’s a good chance you’re reading these words on one — but in case you’d like an alternative to the handheld cacophony that distracts you all day, consider a poem.
Read on for a rich array of recent poetry collections from the past few months. And if your phone is still nearby, you can always order a copy from an independent bookshop or local library — or forward the list to one of your terminally online friends and suggest reading some poetry together.
You could always post something online about it later.
Michael Bazzett, “Cloudwatcher” (Copper Canyon)
Winner of the 2025 Stern Prize, “Cloudwatcher” bursts with beauty, invention and strangeness. The poems contain unexpected depths and emotion, such as in “Animal,” about a child and grandfather encountering a creature in the woods, or “The Revisionist,” in which a narrator restores life to those killed by gunfire. “Tongues” talks about weather in a way understandable to anyone who’s ever tried to explain Southern California seasons.
Victoria Chang, “Tree of Knowledge” (FSG)
The much-honored poet of “OBIT” and “With My Back to the World” returns with a book of poems that draw inspiration from trees and works of art by Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell and Hilma af Klint, and she delivers a powerful 20-page work about the 1885 forcible expulsion of Chinese workers from Eureka, California.
Caleb Femi, “Poor” (MCD/FSG)
This collection, first published in 2020, has been reissued this year, and its powerful mix of poetry and photography demonstrates why the affecting work of this writer, photographer and TV director not only won awards but also the praise of acclaimed writers such as Max Porter and Bernardine Evaristo.
Leontia Flynn, “Selected Poems” (Carcanet Poetry)
Drawing from five previously published books of poetry, this collection is a wonderful introduction to this Irish poet, who composes poems that witness the rumble and jumble of an evolving Belfast, as well as giving praise to ancient artifacts, such as the floppy disc: “How young it is to be so obsolete.”
Jorie Graham, “Killing Spree” (FSG)
The Pulitzer Prize winner’s 16th book of poetry explores how humans navigate the world even as we destroy it through both our actions and inactions. These poems, spare and sometimes desolate, teem with harsh realities and unadorned truths. The title poem takes the reader into the crosshairs of war’s violence, exploding euphemistic descriptions of its horrors.
Daniel Halpern, “Air” (Copper Canyon)
Halpern, who founded Ecco Press and co-founded the literary magazine Atreus with Paul Bowles in Morocco, finds meaning in memory and detail of the past, such as a long-gone game of catch in the San Fernando Valley or a bicycle left behind on wet grass, its teen owner nervously approaching the door of a potential love interest.
Arielle Hebert, “Bottom Feeders” (Black Lawrence Press)
The title poem of this powerhouse collection offers a potent, double-barreled burst of unflinching detail and narrative as two queer Florida teens struggle to navigate the nighttime world of swamp ranches, waterfront mansions and burnt-out trailers. The poem “Alligator Fight” opens with the couplet, “We were the kind of girls / that brought a bat to prom,” and it was simply impossible to stop reading further.
Kazim Ali, “The Man in 119” (Copper Canyon)
A professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, Ali found the title of his latest collection in a line in a 10,000 Maniacs song, as well as the number on the door of a hospital room. Written in the wake of his mother’s passing, this collection, whose inspirations include Homer and R.E.M., explores love, mortality and the afterlife.
Warren Liu, “First Contact” (Kaya Press)
In a collection published by Los Angeles’s own Kaya Press, Liu, an English professor at Scripps College in Claremont, uses humor and a chorus of voices to describe the initial encounter between the people of a coastal community and a shipwrecked crew sent to colonize new lands. “Who’d be dumb enough to try to claim sand?” asks one local as the struggling new arrivals attempt to establish a beachhead.
Nick Martino, “Scrapbook” (Alice James Books)
In poems bursting with emotion and humor, Martino’s debut collection is just stunning. Rifling through old photos, journals and documents, the L.A.-based poet, who got his MFA at UC Irvine, captures haunting images from the lives of his parents, including a stop along the highway with his mother and a visit to his father in prison, and finds meaning in clever repetition. And even as a piece of design, “Scrap Book” is a beautiful thing.
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Chelsey Minnis, “Opera Fever” (Wave Books)
Lest you think that “Opera Fever” sounds too fusty and high-toned for a modern reader, this delight-filled collection from Minnis is hot with steamy come-ons and a fun romanticism evoked by B-movie details, which span from conga lines and wall safes to a bed covered in partygoers’ coats and a painting with eyes that move.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, “Night Owl” (Ecco)
The author of the much-praised collection, “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments,” returns with a book of poems that investigate the nighttime, tracking all that can happen in the darkness between sunset and sunrise. And as before, Nezhukumatathil writes about the natural world with a glorious curiosity and grace.
José Emilio Pacheco, Edited by George McWhirter, “Selected Poems” (New Directions)
Considered a giant of late-20th century Latin American literature, this iconic Mexican poet is the subject of a new bilingual collection of his poetry featuring the work of multiple translators. Editor McWhirter worked with the poet, who died in 2014, and these versions are believed to best represent Pacheco’s ideal versions.
Maya C. Popa, “If You Love That Lady” (Norton)
Popa, the author of two previous collections and the poetry editor for Publishers Weekly, has just published a new book inspired by pre-20th century letters of love and courtship. Its poems are filled with longing and the challenges of connection, and pieces such as “Dark Matter” and “And Miles to Go” throb with a hopeful ache even as things seem bleakest.
Maggie Smith, “A Suit or a Suitcase” (Washington Square Press / Atria)
Bestselling author, host of the poetry program “The Slowdown” and one of the most popular poets working, Smith has a gift for rendering feelings drawn up from the depths in language that is immediately accessible and understandable (ably demonstrated in her best-known work, “Good Bones”). This book’s “Study” and “A Suit or a Suitcase” are examples of Smith at her best.
Karen Solie, “Wellwater” (FSG Poetry)
Solie has won major awards for her poetry, and this latest collection (which, though entirely beside the point, has a lovely cover) bursts with wonderful work — a poem about the knee-weakening wisdom of a child or lovingly remembered landscapes that were, at the same time, also tainted with pesticides and toxins.
Cole Swenson, “Veer” (Alice James Books)
The prolific, National Book Award-nominated poet returns with her 20th collection. “Veer” is rich with paragraph-shaped poems, which careen from meditations on the nature of crows or a door that mysteriously swings open to richly observed reveries on the natural world, from fields of California wildflowers to twilight on a river.
Shrikant Verma, translated by Rahul Soni, “Magadh” (Liveright / W.W. Norton)
In a classic available to American readers for the first time, this vital collection by the late Indian poet Verma, who died in 1986, was written during the late ’70s period of political and national turmoil in India. In these poems, he looks back to the lost empire of the title with a vibrant blend of history and imagination.
D.S. Waldman, “Atria” (Liveright / W.W. Norton)
In this debut collection, Waldman offers a variety of forms and approaches to his poetry, such as the narrative about making paintings after a sibling’s death, “Three Years Ago,” or a stoned afternoon with friends gazing at the ocean in “Point Reyes.” Keith Jarrett’s “Köln Concert” recording and the work of other visual artists offer recurring inspiration.
Dean Young, “Creature Feature” (Copper Canyon)
Young, who underwent a heart transplant in 2011, died in 2022, and this posthumous collection completes a planned trilogy that began with “Shock by Shock” and “Solar Perplexus.” Lovingly assembled by his friends at Copper Canyon, these poems include haunting lines such as “make every exit an entrance” and the last line of the final poem, which reads, “The best endings are abrupt.”
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