Poetry isn't as scary as you think. These 14 collections of poems tackle everything from grief and race to family and love.

He handed me a book, opened to a page with a short poem, and said, “You read this one.” The last time I read a poem in public was decades ago in Delhi, at a high-school competition.

Dad wanted me to leave you all with this poem he wrote, which he gave me a long time ago, and told me that if I ever got here, I should read it. So that’s what I’m going to do.” Here I am, 39.

I Want This Poem Read Aloud at My Funeral Jane Kenyon’s “The Pond at Dusk” is a quiet, mischievous reckoning with nature and mortality. Our critic A.O. Scott plumbs its depths.

“Poetry is dead,” writes Koethe, “until it actually is and you want it to come back, whether you liked it or not.” But the art still has its outliers, talking into the advancing dusk.