Bookshelf: Waxing poetic for April

It's April, which means it's also National Poetry Month. Here's a selection of new and notable verse titles worth reading.

When Anthony Hecht died of lymphoma in 2004, he left behind a body of work that showcased his vast intellect and formal mastery. Yet as "Selected Poems" (Alfred A. Knopf, $17.95 paper) makes clear, the

poet did not shy away from unforgiving self-examination, as in "The Ghost in the Martini": "Moody and self-obsessed, / Unhappy, defiant, with guilty dreams galore, / Full of ill-natured pride, and unconfessed / Snob and a thorough bore." This volume, with a graceful introduction by J.D. McClatchy, offers an excellent sampling of one of the 20th century's most distinguished poets.

In Yusef Komunyakaa's latest, "The Chameleon Couch" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24), the Pulitzer Prize-winner seamlessly blends the ancient and the modern ("Adonis in the Big Apple") and the mythic and the personal: "I am a riddle to be unraveled. / I am not / & I am. When their eyes are on me / I become whatever is judged badly." His winding lines and abundant use of ampersands recall Allen Ginsberg's jazzy riffs, and his bold proclamations ("Tell your inheritors to think of me / when they smile up at the sky") are impressively Whitman-esque.

In a career spanning more than three decades, Marge Piercy has become known for her energetic poems, charged with love and sex and informed by her Judaism, experiences of grief and fierce political convictions. "The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010" (Knopf, $30) offers highlights from nine collections, as well as new poems. It includes one of Piercy's finest, "What's that smell in the kitchen?", with its simmering feminist rage and echoes of Sylvia Plath: "All over America women are burning / food they're supposed to bring with calico / smiles on platters glittering like wax."

That Billy Collins is a celebrity and a bestselling poet is both blessing and curse. He's adored and dismissed in equal measure. Yet Collins, who teaches at Lehman College, City University of New York, has always been an unabashed populist; he actually wants readers to understand his work. "Horoscopes for the Dead" (Random House, $24) shows off his wry humor, as when pointing out fame's fickleness in "Feedback": "The woman who wrote from Phoenix / after my reading there / to tell me they were all still talking about it / just wrote again / to tell me that they had stopped." Present too are meditations on mortality and loss. This is the poet's richest work to date.

The Virginia poet Charles Wright has managed to publish 19 collections of verse while maintaining a quiet, unassuming presence in the poetry world. "Bye-and-Bye" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27), a wonderful collection of late poems, features his usual spiritual and philosophical musings: "The voyage into the interior is all that matters, / Whatever your ride." Wright's most persistent state is one of searching, and his poetic voice is, as ever, humble and wise.

At more than 700 pages, "The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $50), edited by the scholar Ilan Stavans, is an essential addition to any poetry library. It includes works by familiar names such as Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda, but many more whose names are obscure -- and fine translations by notable poets including Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, W.S. Merwin, Richard Wilbur and Galway Kinnell.

Cult figure Leonard Cohen is acclaimed for his poetry as much as his music, and rightly so. Like the lyrics of fellow bard Bob Dylan, Cohen's evocative words need no music for their power to resonate. "Leonard Cohen" (Everyman's Library, $13.50) is a fine compilation, with classics such as "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah." As the introduction notes, Cohen's poems effortlessly mingle the "sacred and the profane, the holy and the broken," resulting in intimate poems that read almost like prayers.

Over the years, Caroline Kennedy has established herself as a poetry anthologist, and although some serious-minded readers may scoff, she has excellent taste. Her latest, "She Walks in Beauty" (Hyperion/Voice, $24.99) chronicles the formative stages of women's lives, including friendship, motherhood and work. Sappho, Frank O'Hara, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Mary Oliver, e.e. cummings and other major poets are featured, but to her credit, Kennedy doesn't choose the most obvious or iconic work in every instance -- making this anthology full of pleasant poetic surprises.