Poetry Says It Better: Poems to Help You Wake Up

"A generous, heartfelt gift." — Kirkus (STARRED review)

The legendary Academy Award–winning actress reflects on her love affair with poetry and makes us all believers.

We all want inspiration. We want to feel connected to something universal. And we want to be able to share that wonder with friends and loved ones.

In this beautiful volume, Ellen Burstyn celebrates poetic magic and shares her favorite works. Now into her nineties, Ellen reveals she had an evangelical response to learning poetry even as a child and would memorize and recite the works of Edna St Vincent Millay to envelope herself in the poet’s deeper emotional landscape.

As Burstyn continued her epic rise through film and theater—eventually winning an Oscar, a Tony, a BAFTA, and an Emmy—poetry gave voice to her experience as no other literary art form could. She never went anywhere without her curated “poetry pack.” While waiting on set, in rehearsal, on a train, or just relaxing, she found comfort in verse.

For nearly nine decades, poetry has led Ellen on a life of adventure, from a pilgrimage to Rumi’s birthplace to a friendship with Maya Angelou, during which the poet read her work in Ellen’s movie trailer, to selecting the poems to join her in love, in motherhood and in grief.

Featuring work by W.B. Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, Rumi, William Ernest Henley, and others, Poetry Says It Better is a perfect daily companion for everyone looking to deepen and add meaning to their life experience. Throughout, Burstyn’s charming voice and luminous insights help readers meet her in this poetic celebration—soul to soul.

"Burstyn's tender, graceful selections serve as ample evidence that a poem may inspire 'our day-to-day, moment-by-moment intention to be kind and to be conscious.' A generous, heartfelt gift." - Kirkus (STARRED review)

"A thoughtfully curated walk through the heart-gallery of a creative titan. Reading Poetry Says It Better, one feels brighter, warmly accompanied, and better made." - Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

"Ellen is a poem, and Ellen has filled my life with poetry. I treasure every collection she sent me over the years because they always change me. Now to have an entire book on her inspirations! What a gift to the world." - Darren Aronofsky, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker

"In Poetry Says It Better, Ellen Burstyn has assembled a thoughtful and passionate biographical anthology of poems that have shaped her life and given it depth and meaning... An invitation to readers to investigate poetry for themselves, and to recognize, in these dark times, just how central poetry is to cultivating awe and understanding in our own lives." - Todd Colby, poet and author of Splash State