- The Art of Reading Poetry (1994)
- The Collected Works of James E. Handley (2006)
Poetry Collections:
- The Blue Guitar (1972)
- The Long Valley (1981)
- The Ghost Road (1988)
- The Fire and the Rose (1992)
- The Garden of Delights (1997)
- The Book of the Dead (2000)
- The Apocalypse (2004)
- The Divine Comedy (2007)
- The Iliad and the Odyssey (2011)
- The Aeneid (2014)
- The Complete Poems of James E. Handley (2017)
Short Story Collections:
- The Last Supper (1976)
- The Garden of Eden (1980)
- The Tree of Life (1984)
- The Book of Revelation (1989)
- The Dance of Death (1993)
- The Wages of Sin (1998)
- The Seven Deadly Sins (2002)
- The Four Last Things (2006)
- The Complete Stories of James E. Handley (2010)
Essays and Criticism:
- The Art of Poetry (1982)
- The Craft of Poetry (1986)
- The Rhetoric of Poetry (1990)
- The Interpretation of Poetry (1995)
- The Philosophy of Poetry (2000)
- The Religion of Poetry (2005)
- The Politics of Poetry (2009)
- The Spirituality of Poetry (2013)
- The Complete Essays of James E. Handley (2017)
Translations:
- The Poems of Sappho (1978)
- The Poems of Alcaeus (1982)
- The Poems of Anacreon (1986)
- The Poems of Pindar (1990)
- The Poems of Sophocles (1994)
- The Poems of Euripides (1998)
- The Poems of Aristophanes (2002)
- The Poems of Menander (2006)
- The Complete Poems of James E. Handley (2010)