World's Best Poetry, Volume 1: Home and Friendship (Part 2)

This is a poetry collection that captures the feelings we carry for the places and people that shape us. Curated by Canadian poet laureate Bliss Carman, this volume gathers verses that explore what it means to belong somewhere, to love someone, to find home in another person. The poems here span the tender terrain of youth and its first crushes, the warmth and complexity of domestic life, and friendship in all its manifestations: from the joy of kindred spirits to the pain of separations and losses. These are poems written across generations of poets, speaking to something enduring in the human experience: that we are, all of us, made by our attachments. Whether you are returning to poetry after years away or deepening an already devoted practice, these verses offer the particular comfort of language that has learned to name what we feel but cannot say. The collection belongs on a bedside table, opened at random on a quiet evening, or read sequentially as a journey through the landscapes of the heart.