24 Poetry Collections to Read Based on Your Zodiac Sign
Finding a new book to fall in love with can no doubt be a difficult task when your TBR pile is a mile long. Sure, you can randomly pick from your stack or choose one that’s just calling out to you but if you’re looking for a fun way to locate your next read, consider this: finding one whose book birthday shares the same zodiac sign as you! For example, say you’re a Scorpio. Then, if a book was published on October 26, you’d read that since it matches your sign.
Want to try this book-choosing method out? Take a look at these 24 books that were all published within the last year (or are forthcoming in the next month or so) and make your pick based on what your zodiac sign is!
Aries
Waterbaby by Nikki Wallschlaeger
Published April 6 by Copper Canyon Press, Wallschlaeger “turns to water―the natural element of grief―to trace history’s interconnected movements through family, memory, and day-to-day survival.”
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
Also published April 6, this Graywolf Press-published debut collection, the winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, “asks how mistranslation can be a form of self-knowledge and survival…[It] fearlessly rides the tension between carnality and tenderness in the unruly human spirit.”
Taurus
Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon
Published April 27 by Copper Canyon Press, this book is centered around the things in life that threaten to take you under, per the publisher. “The anxieties and heartbreaks of life―including environmental collapse, cruel politics, and the persistent specter of suicide―are met with emotional vulnerability and darkly sparkling humor.”
The Renunciations by Donika Kelly
This Graywolf title, published May 4, “is a book of resilience, survival, and the journey to radically shift one’s sense of self in the face of trauma.”
Gemini
Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs
Published June 8 by Milkweed Editions, this Max Ritvo Poetry Prize-winning debut collection chronicles “the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better.”
Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus by Lannie Stabile
This collection made its way into the world June 9 from Cephalopress and “conveys an important message: the damage of patriarchy, its effects on our mental health, and the legacy that Zeus leaves behind.”
Cancer
Somebody Else Sold the World by Adrian Matejka
Published July 6 by Penguin Books, the poems in this collection “show that there are many possibilities of brightness and hope, even in the middle of pandemics and revolutions,” as illustrated through personal and cultural references.
The Collection Plate by Kendra Allen
Also published July 6, this Ecco-published debut collection “explores both how we collect and erase the voices, lives, and innocence of underrepresented bodies—and behold their pleasure, pain, and possibility”.
Leo
Goldenrod by Maggie Smith
This Simon & Schuster-published collection, published July 27, “look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory” through the lens of everyday objects, “[revealing] the magic of the present moment.”
Playlist for the Apocalypse by Rita Dove
Published August 17 by W. W. Norton, this collection by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet “takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul.”
Virgo
Mutiny by Phillip B. Williams
Published September 7 by Penguin Books, Williams writes about “loneliness, desire, doubt, memory, and the borderline between beauty and tragedy…[and] honors the transformative power of anger, and the clarity that comes from allowing that anger to burn clean.”
Gumbo Ya Ya by Aurielle Marie
This University of Pittsburgh Press-published and Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winning debut collection, released September 21, “is a cauldron of hearty poems exploring race, gender, desire, and violence in the lives of Black gxrls, soaring against the backdrop of a contemporary South.”
Libra
How to Not Be Afraid of Everything by Jane Wong
Published October 12 by Alice James Books, Wong “explores loss, grief, migration, colonization, and alienation.”
Mother/land by Ananda Lima
Published October 15 by Black Lawrence Press, Lima’s collection “is focused on the intersection of motherhood and immigration and its effects on a speaker’s relationship to place, others and self.”
Scorpio
Every Little Vanishing by Sheleen McElhinney
This debut collection, published by Write Bloody on October 26, is centered around grief, vulnerability, and loss. “[The poems] are for anyone who wants to learn how to grow a new skin, to excavate the body of its grief, to devour it, and to let it choke you.”
Requeening by Amanda Moore
Also published on October 26 is this Ecco collection, winner of the National Poetry Series, which “explores the various roles a woman plays in the family, the home, and the world at large” through a beehive lens.
Sagittarius
Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
In this forthcoming collection, releasing December 7 through Viking Books, presidential inaugural poet Gorman “captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing.”
Come Clean by Joshua Nguyen
Another forthcoming collection, this book from University of Wisconsin Press “compartmentalizes past trauma—sexual and generational—through the quotidian…[the poems] unpack, organize, and tidy up life’s messy joys and hurtful chaos with intimacy, grace, and vulnerability.”
Capricorn
Floaters by Martín Espada
Published January 19 by W. W. Norton, this recently-named National Book Award winner “ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up” with poems centering around protest and love.
Return Flight by Jennifer Huang
Forthcoming January 18 from Milkweed Editions and winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, this debut collection “is a lush reckoning: with inheritance, with body, with trauma, with desire” and everything from history and wounds to healing and memories.
Aquarius
The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void by Jackie Wang
In this Nightboat-published debut collection (released February 2), also a National Book Award finalist, Wang “illustrates the social dimension of dreams and their ability to inform and reshape the dreamer’s waking world with renewed energy and insight.”
Self-Portrait with Cephalopod by Kathryn Smith
Published February 9 by Milkweed Editions, this Jake Adam York Prize-winning collection “offers observations and anxieties, prophecies and prayers, darkness and light—but never false hope.”
Pisces
If This Is the Age We End Discovery by Rosebud Ben-Oni
Published March 9 by Alice James Books, this collection dazzles with both a lyrical and science focus that “tackles major existential issues.”
Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio
This W. W. Norton-published collection, released March 16, “charts a hazardous course through heartache, climate change, dental work, Outlander, semiotics, and more.”
Which collection will you be picking up?
