The teenage years are a time filled with sadness, madness, joy, and all the messy stuff in between. Sometimes it feels that every day brings a new struggle, a new concern, a new reason to stay in bed with the shades drawn. But between moments of despair and confusion often come times of great clarity and insight, when you might think, like the poet Rumi, "Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!" It is moments like these that have inspired the touching, honest, and gripping poems found in I Just Hope It's Lethal: Poems of Sadness, Madness, and Joy. After all, what's normal anyway?

This collection includes poems by Charles Bukowski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, T. S. Eliot, Edgar Allen Poe, W. B. Yeats, Dorothy Parker, Jane Kenyon, and many more, including teenage writers and up-and-coming poets.

"[A] deeply affecting, and sophisticated collection, which will resonate with young people in all states of mental equilibrium." Booklist

"Powerfully written and easy to understand....This efficiently organized, concise, and interesting collection is an excellent choice for libraries serving teens." School Library Journal

"The wide range of styles, from poets both famous and lesser known, from various time periods, also adds interest....Good biographical notes and indices of authors, titles, and first lines conclude the volume." Horn Book

"By placing young poets in such illustrious company, Rosenberg and November encourage creativity in their readers and introduce teenagers to a wide range of poems." Children's Literature

Liz Rosenberg is a poet and author of more than twenty books for young readers. She teaches English and creative writing at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Deena November is a writer and recent college graduate living in Pennsylvania.

Sadness Without Reason: Moods A Sad Child by Margaret Atwood Infant Sorrow by William Blake I Hate My Moaning by Gerald Stern Untitled poem: “I like my anger” by Ikkyü The Stranger by Charles Baudelaire A Place for Everything by Louis Jenkins A Larger Loneliness by Eli Bosnick The Eyes of My Regret by Angelina Weld Grimké Let No Charitable Hope by Elinor Wylie A White City by Michael Burkard “Do you think I know what I’m doing . .?” by Rumi To Solitude by John Keats Reality’s Dark Dream by Samuel Taylor Coleridge End of Winter by Liz Rosenberg Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Wild World Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar Much Madness is divinest Sense by Emily Dickinson Father William by Lewis Carroll London by William Blake Holding the Holy Card by J. Patrick Lewis Oda para Leticia by Oscar Bermeo clean that god damned room already by Deena November Her Kind by Anne Sexton Ornate Iron Gates by Das Lanzilloti From The Black Riders and Other Lines by Stephen Crane Kitchen by Twain Dooley In the Boobiehatch by Das Lanzilloti Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright Clearly Through My Tears by Susan Love Fitts When I was a kid in Nueva York by Alvin Delgado The world is too much with us by William Wordsworth

Lopsided Love The Folly of Being Comforted by W. B. Yeats He Bids His Love Be At Peace by W. B. Yeats Discord in Childhood by D.H. Lawrence Anecdote by Dorothy Parker Autumn Valentine by Dorothy Parker The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot From A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare Wasted by June Jordan One Art by Elizabeth Bishop Melba Street by Deena November Always Secondary by Deena November When We Two Parted by Lord Byron How Heavy the Days . by Hermann Hesse Fall On Me by Kate Schmitt The Taxi by Amy Lowell “You don’t have ‘bad’ days and ‘good’ days . .” by Rumi “When I am with you, we stay up all night . .” by Rumi

Rapid Tumble No Moment Past This One by Stephen Dobyns The Year I Found by Dieter Weslowski Brotherhood by Yehoshua November Dream Song 22 “Of 1826” by John Berryman Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell Things by Fleur Adcock The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe Hysteria by T. S. Eliot Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath Having It Out with Melancholy by Jane Kenyon Prelude to the Fall by Kate Schmitt Fallen by Kate Schmitt The Waking by Theodore Roethke Jealousy by Elaine Resitfo Babble by Cesar Vallejo I Told Them I Should Be Here by Kate Schmitt Wanting to Die by Anne Sexton Mad Song by William Blake "The first Day’s Night had come” by Emily Dickinson Lines Written During a Period of Insanity (1774) by William Cowper National Depression Awareness Week by Mary Ruefle Anonymous by Susan Love Fitts “There is a light seed grain inside . .” by Rumi

Wish You Were Here: The Return So, We’ll Go No More a Roving by Lord Byron Poems of Delight by Liz Rosenberg Raising My Hand by Antler nobody but you by Charles Bukowski Window Box by Thomas Scott Fisken Back by Jane Kenyon The Journey by Howard Nelson Jade’s Iguanas Are Dead by Gregory Razran I Think I’ll Call It Morning by Gil Scott-Heron Résumé by Dorothy Parker From Death’s Echo by W. H. Auden Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens From The Prisoner: A Fragment by Emily Brontë A Glass of Water by May Sarton How A Place Becomes Holy by Yehoshua November Sunflower by Rolf Jacobsen Late Fragment by Raymond Carver “For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself . .” by Rumi Evil Time by Hermann Hesse