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Poets.org has asked a number of poets, including the Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, to list a few poetry books that they would recommend to others. The selections that have come in so far include new favorites, influential volumes, books returned to over and over, must-reads, and books frequently recommended to students or new poetry readers.
Ai
Robert Bly
Billy Collins
Toi Derricotte
Joy Harjo
Robert Hass
John Hollander
Fanny Howe
Susan Howe
Mark Jarman
Philip Levine
Nathaniel Mackey
Arthur Sze
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Ai recommends:
Galway Kinnell
Body Rags
2002, Mariner Books Reissue
Galway Kinnell
The Book of Nightmares
1973, Mariner Books
W. S. Merwin
The Lice
1993, Copper Canyon Press Reissue
Cesare Pavese
Hard Labor
1979, Johns Hopkins University Press
James Wright
Shall We Gather at the River
1968, University Press Of New England
Sylvia Plath
Ariel
2004, HarperCollins Restored Edition
Allen Ginsberg
Howl
1956, City Lights Books
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Robert Bly recommends:
Wallace Stevens
Harmonium
1923, Faber and Faber
Antonio Machado
Soledad
1990, Fondo de Cultura Económica
Antonio Machado
Times Alone
1983, Wesleyan Univ Press
Richard Wilbur
The Beautiful Changes
1947, Reynal & Hitchcock
Robert Creeley
For Love
1980, Macmillan
Cesar Vallejo
The Black Messengers
1995, Losada
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Billy Collins recommends:
Richard Brautigan
The Pill vs. The Springhill Mind Disaster
1969, Delacorte Press
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems
1999, Grove Press
Kenneth Koch
New Addresses
2001, Knopf
Wislawa Szymborska
View with a Grain of Sand
1995, Harvest Books |
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Toi Derricotte recommends:
Lucille Clifton
The Book of Light
1993, Copper Canyon Press
Galway Kinnell
The Book of Nightmares
1973, Mariner Books
Yusef Komunyakaa
Dien Cai Dau
1988, Wesleyan University Press
Sharon Olds
The Gold Cell
1987, Knopf
Rainer Maria Rilke
Duino Elegies
1992, W. W. Norton & Company reissue
Gerald Stern
Paradise
1984, Random House
Ruth Stone
Simplicity
1997, Paris Press
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Joy Harjo recommends:
John Burnside
The Good Neighbour
2005, Jonathan Cape
Audre Lorde
The Black Unicorn
1995, W.W. Norton & Co. Reissue
Okot P'Bitek
Song of Lawino
1984, Heinemann Reissue
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Robert Hass recommends:
Forrest Gander
Science and Steepleflower
1998, New Directions
Donald Revell
Arcady
2002, Wesleyan Univ. Press
Brenda Hillman
Cascadia
2001, Wesleyan University Press
Louise Glück
October
2004, Sarabande Books
Myung Mi Kim
Commons
2002, University of California Press
Peter Gizzi
Some Values of Landscape and Weather
2003, Wesleyan University Press |
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John Hollander recommends:
John Milton
Paradise Lost
2005, Norton Reissue
George Herbert
The Temple
1981, Paulist Press Reissue
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
1855 edition, Penguin Classics
Emily Dickinson
Complete Poems
1976, Back Bay Books Edition
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Complete Poems
1999, W.W. Norton & Co. Edition
Thomas Hardy
The Complete Poems
2002, Palgrave Macmillan
Wallace Stevens
Collected Poetry and Prose
1997, Library of America
W. H. Auden
The Complete Works
1988, Princeton University Press
Elizabeth Bishop
Complete Poems, 1927-1979
1984, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
James Merrill
Collected Poems
2001, Knopf
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Fanny Howe recommends:
Bernadette Mayer
Midwinter Day
1999, New Directions
Lyn Hejinian
Happily
2000, Post Apollo Press
Rae Armantrout
Up To Speed
2004, Wesleyan University Press
Melvin B. Tolson
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
1999, University Press of Virginia
Leslie Scalapino
Zither & Autobiography
2003, Wesleyan University Press |
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Susan Howe recommends:
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon
2001, Penguin Books
Ezra Pound
The Pisan Cantos
2003, New Directions
Rainer Maria Rilke
elected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
ed. & trans. by Stephen Mitchell
1989, Vintage, Reissue Edition
John Ashbery
Where Shall I Wander
2005, Ecco
John Ashbery
Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror
1992, Penguin
John Ashbery
Tennis Court Oath
1977, Wesleyan University Press
J. H. Prynne
Poems by J. H. Prynne
1999, Bloodaxe Books
W. H. Auden
The Sea and The Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's "The Tempest,"
2003, Princeton University Press
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein, Writings 1932-1946
1998, Library of America
Wallace Stevens
Collected Poetry & Prose by Wallace Stevens
1997, Library of America
Emily Dickinson
The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson
1998, University of Massachusetts Press
H. D.
Trilogy
1998, New Directions
H. D.
Helen In Egypt
1998, New Directions
William Carlos Williams
Patterson
1995, New Directions
Robert Creeley
Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-75
1985, University of California Press
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Mark Jarman recommends:
Robert Lowell
Life Studies
1967, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Chase Twichell
The Ghost of Eden
1998, George Braziller
Philip Larkin
High Windows
1974, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Elizabeth Bishop
Geography III
1977, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Philip Levine
1933
1974, Atheneum
Andrew Hudgins
The Never-Ending
1992, Houghton Mifflin
Garrett Hongo
The River of Heaven
1988, Knopf Reprint |
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Philip Levine recommends:
Elizabeth Bishop
Geography III
1977, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sterling Brown
Southern Road
1974, Beacon Press
Zbigniew Herbert
Selected Poems
1986, Ecco Press
Kenneth Koch
New Addresses
2001, Knopf
Larry Levis
Winter Stars
1985, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press
Cesare Pavese
Hard Labor
1986, Ecco Press
Theodore Roethke
The Lost Son
1948, Doubleday
Edward Thomas
The Poems of Edward Thomas
2003, Handsel Books
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
from Leaves of Grass, 1983, Bantam Classics
William Carlos Williams
Selected Poems
1985, New Directions |
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Nathaniel Mackey recommends:
Robert Duncan
Bending the Bow
1968, New Directions
Kamau Brathwaite
The Arrivants
1988, Oxford University Press
H. D.
Trilogy
1998, New Directions
H. D.
Hermetic Definition
1972, New Directions
H. D.
Helen in Egypt
1998, New Directions
Ed Roberson
Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In
1995, University of Iowa Press |
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Arthur Sze recommends:
Jay Wright
Transfigurations
2000, Louisiana State University Press
Charles Simic
Selected Early Poems
2000, George Braziller
John Yau
Borrowed Love Poems
2002, Penguin
C. D. Wright
Deepstep Come Shining
1998, Copper Canyon Press
Forrest Gander
Science and Steepleflower
1998, New Directions
Jon Davis
Scrimmage of Appetite
1995, University of Akron Press
Carolyn Kizer
Cool, Calm, and Collected
2000, Copper Canyon Press
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