Kish Guides: Exploring Poetry: Award-Winning Poetry

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks, a key black poet of the Civil Rights Era, was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays by Robert Frost
Between the 1920's and 1940's, Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times.
Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser
Kooser's Delights & Shadows won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2004.
Collected Poems by James Wright
James Wright's Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
Amy Lowell - Selected Poems by Amy Lowell
Lowell won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for her book What's O'Clock?
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
Snyder's Turtle Island won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975.

National Book Award for Poetry

What Work Is by Philip Levine
Detroit poet Philip Levine won the 1991 National Book Award for Poetry for this book.

"This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America...very accessible and utterly American in tone and language."
--Daniel L. Guillory, Library Journal
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The Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren by Robert Penn Warren
Warren won the National Book Award for Poetry for Promises: Poems, 1954-1956.

A prodigiously diversified writer, Robert Penn Warren was the first poet laureate of the United States and twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry and ten novels, including All the King's Men, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)
Later Poems - Selected and New, 1971-2012 by Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974 for her book Diving Into the Wreck. However, she chose to accept the award not as an individual, but on behalf of all women. She shared the award with writers Audre Lorde and Alice Walker.
John Berryman: Collected Poems, 1937-1971 by John Berryman
Berryman won the National Book Award for Poetry, and the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Dream Songs. He also received numerous other honors during his lifetime.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems by Wallace Stevens
This first-rate collection includes brilliant works by one of America's most important poets. Witty, ironic, and thought-provoking, the experimental style of Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) forever changed the landscape of modern poetry. This edition features 82 poems, including such oft-studied compositions as "Sunday Morning," "Peter Quince at the Clavier," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and the title piece. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

Stevens won the National Book Award in 1951 for The Auroras of Autumn, and again in 1958 for his Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.
The Singing by C. K. Williams
Williams's book The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award for Poetry. He won numerous other awards throughout his career as well.

"The Singing"
I was walking home down a hill near our house
on a balmy afternoon
under the blossoms
Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here
every spring with
their burgeoning forth...

Featured Poet: Allen Ginsberg

Image credit: Michiel Hendryckx CC BY-SA 3.0
Allen Ginsberg
Regarded as the foremost poet of the Beat generation (a group of rebellious writers who opposed conformity and sought intensity of experience), Ginsberg's work is concerned with many subjects of contemporary interest, including drugs, sexual confusion, the voluntary poverty of the artist and rebel, and rejection of society. He is a poet with a significant message, and his criticism of American society is part of a long tradition of American writers who have questioned their country's values. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

Ginsberg won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974 for The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971.

Howl, and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
The prophetic poem that launched a generation when it was first published in 1965 is here presented in a commemorative fortieth Anniversary Edition. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)
Selected Poems, 1947-1995 by Allen Ginsberg
Collected Poems, 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg