April in National Poetry Month, so for today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, I’m going to do a poetic twist on That Artsy Reader Girl’s choice of “top ten books you’d be a fool not to read” and shout out novels in verse and books of poetry:

1. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds: Reynolds does a flawless job in this novel in verse (written for young adults, but which everyone should read) of composing the narrative between our protagonist, a teen in an elevator out to avenge his brother’s death, and all the people he’s known who’ve been shot.
2. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse: A work of historical fiction, this novel in verse focuses on a teen who was injured in the fire that killed her mother, who is grieving at the same time as the Oklahoma prairie on which she lives is dying from Dust Bowl storms.
3. Me: Moth by Amber McBride: A teen whose family was killed in a car crash and the abused boy next door embark upon a desperate roadtrip and, as with most literary roadtrips, find out more about themselves and each other than they expected to.
4. Booked by Kwame Brown: As with Long Way Down, this is one of those books I point to where the form allows you to things you might not be able to in prose. In this case, it’s a boy who loves soccer and coming to love books and whose narration mimics the tempo of a soccer match.
5. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson: In this memoir in verse, Woodson looks back on a childhood spent in New York City and South Carolina in the 1960s and ’70s and aspiring to be a writer.
6. If God Invented Baseball: Poems by E. Ethelbert Miller: A local poet and journalist of renown, Miller infuses these poems with his love of the game.
7. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter: An homage to the Emily Dickinson poem, but with a twist, since it is not hope that perches in this family’s souls, but grief. And quite literally moves into their London flat, when a six-foot-tall crow shows up at the door to greet a poetry scholar and his two young sons in the quiet after everyone has left following the funeral of his wife/their mother.
8. Honest Engine by Kyle Dargan: Another D.C. poet, whose collection of poems runs the gamut from the State of the Union to sleep deprivation to a dozen or so poems about loved ones gone from this earth, with a surprising amount of science fiction fandom thrown in for good measure.
9. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan: On the first day of 5th grade, a teacher informs her students they’re going to write a poem every day in class. The novel shares a selection from each of the 18 students over the course of a tumultuous year of change and activism. Magnificently, Shovan succeeds in giving each kid enough of a distinct voice that you get so you can recognize a poem’s author without checking first.
10. The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop: I would be remiss if I didn’t include the collected works by Bishop, one of my very favorite poets. Bishop loves to play with words and with traditional poetic forms. You probably read “One Art” long ago back in school. It’s worth revisiting now that you’re older, as are many of her other poems.

How about you? Do you have favorite poetry collections or novels in verse you’d recommend?