National Poetry Month #3 - Two Good Anthologies

There were several more posts I wanted to make for National Poetry Month: non-English language poets (hello Neruda & Lorca!), modern poetry, my favorite poets, contemporary poetry, etc. And I can make those at some point, don't have to wait for National Poetry Month. Instead, since I mentioned the importance of poetry anthologies as a means to introduce yourself to poetry in my two previous Poetry Month posts, I decided to suggest two anthologies, among the many I could recommend. The first is Poems That Make Grown Women Cry (2016). It's currently rated 3.60 on Goodreads, and includes poems recommended by 100 well-known women, including Judi Dench, Elena Ferrante, Annie Lennox, Nikki Giovanni, and others. While I've only dipped and skimmed, it looks like a good collection, and you may be curious what poems the various celebrities (not to worry, they're cool celebrities, not a Kardashian in sight), have chosen. Currently it's only available in hardback, but there's always the library. My other suggestion is the companion volume, Poems that Make Grown Men Cry (2014), now available in trade paperback, and rated 3.82 on Goodreads. Again, 100 well known men, such as Colin Firth, Jonathan Franzen, Nick Cave, J.J. Abrams, and more, selected poems for the book. Both volumes include women and men of many nationalities and ages. The books benefit Amnesty International so your money is going to a good cause. So dip into one or both of these books and see what might catch your fancy. And just to round it all out, the poem that makes me cry, literally, is "Death of a Son" by the English poet Jon Silkin. I was disappointed that no one chose it for either volume.