All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel-gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café...

It the summer of 1960, Camila Henríquez Urena is about to travel from Poughkeepsie to Cuba to join Fidel Castro's revolution. As the daughter of Solomé Urena-the 19th -century revolutionary Dominicana poet-activism is part of Camila's inheritance. Yet she also knows the confusion of exile and a painful curiosity about the mother she never knew. Now, as she takes up her mother's legacy, she delves behind the public facts of her mother's life and...

"A debut novel by acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson, in which a poet realizes she has written the works of Baudelaire. One morning, the poet Hazel Brown wakes up in a strange hotel room to find that she's written the complete works of Charles Baudelaire. Surprising as this may be, it's no more surprising to Brown than the impossible journey she's taken to become the writer that she is. Animated by the spirit of the poète maudit, she shuttles between...

Piedra Negra is an isolated village, whose citizens consist mainly of soldiers injured in the revolution who pass the time drinking a firewater so intense, all hallucinate, and most never recover. The firewater distiller's daughter Elena longs to be a poet, and after a chance encounter with Daniel Arcilla, Cuba's most important poet, Elena wins a national poetry prize and leaves Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There she encounters a population adjusting...

In June 1897, the young Constantine Cavafy arrives in Paris on the last stop of a long European tour, a trip that will deeply shape his future and push him toward his poetic inclination. With this lyrical novel, tinged with an hallucinatory eroticism that unfolds over three unforgettable days, celebrated Greek author Ersi Sotiropoulos depicts Cavafy in the midst of a journey of self-discovery across a continent on the brink of massive change. He is...

In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple squats over the populace like a Trump casino, where the streets are literally crawling with prophets and heathen helicopters buzz over Old Testament sovereigns, two young poets are about to have their lives turned upside down. Struggling Jeremiah is worried that he might be wasting his time trying to be a writer; the great critic Broch just beat him over the head with his own computer...

"The daughter of a Venetian musician, Aemilia Bassano came of age in Queen Elizabeth's royal court. The Queen's favorite, she developed a love of poetry and learning, maturing into a young woman known not only for her beauty but also her sharp mind and a quick tongue. When Aemilia becomes the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, she fears her mind will languish--until she crosses paths with an impetuous playwright named William Shakespeare and begins an impassioned...

""Sometimes art is the only means by which we may find out the truth." One morning, a nine-story tower of excrement inexplicably appears in the capital of Dayang. The government performs a hasty cover-up, sparking protests that quickly explode in unrest. Mengliu, a young poet, and his girlfriend Qizi are swept up in the movement -- but in the brutal crackdown that follows, Qizi, along with thousands of other protestors, disappears. Years later, while...

"A young, aspiring poet in a quiet Irish village thinks her life of books suits her perfectly until a charismatic newcomer from America broadens her horizons. Siobhan Doyle grew up with her Uncle Kee at their family pub The Leeside, in rural Ireland. Kee has been staunchly overprotective of Siobhan ever since her mother's death in an IRA bombing, but now that she's an adult, it's clear that in protecting her Kee has unwittingly kept her in a state...