We want to share our love of poetry by showcasing some books of poetry from our collection that you can view at home either through HathiTrust Digital Library, “a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items” and the Internet Archive, “a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.”
Most of the books below illustrate poetry styles from the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries. The poems cover a range of topics in either English or German. In addition to being examples of Midwest American literature, the bindings of the books are beautiful instances of publishers’ bindings. These bindings were “designed for and manufactured in quantity for a publisher.” Learn more about publishers’ bindings through this exhibit, Beauty for Commerce: Publishers’ Bindings, 1830-1910.
Youthful talent is presented in the Morning Star, a fine arts anthology.
Unlike the other books featured here, Lyrical Iowa is available in our collection to view and is available for purchase through the Iowa Poetry Association. While it is unable to view them at this moment, gain inspiration from the works above and write your own poetry to submit to Lyrical Iowa.