Fifty Favorite Poetry Collections
Several rules: (1) I’ve listed these collections in alphabetical order by the author’s last name, rather than in order of preference—though I’ve marked my top ten with asterisks. (2) I’ve limited myself to one book per author. (3) I’ve tried to be honest, which is why this list is shockingly contemporary and shockingly American—shockingly Arkansan, at that—and why there are at least a handful of “Selected,” “Collected,” or “Complete” volumes here. —Kevin Brockmeier, October 4, 2021
1. The Boatloads by Dan Albergotti
2. Water Puppets by Quan Barry
3. Your Friendly Neighborhood Magician: Songs and Early Poems by Peter S. Beagle
4. To Those Who Were Our First Gods by Nickole Brown
5. Apocalyptic Swing by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
6. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
7. Jagged with Love by Susanna Childress
8. Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty (*)
9. Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay
10. Averno by Louise Glück
11. My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge by Paul Guest
12. Sad Little Breathing Machine by Matthea Harvey
13. Donkey Gospel by Tony Hoagland
14. What the Living Do by Marie Howe (*)
15. Crow with No Mouth by Ikkyū
16. Take Me with You Wherever You Go by Jessica Jacobs
17. Questions for Ecclesiastes by Mark Jarman (*)
18. Elegy for the Southern Drawl by Rodney Jones
19. Nude Descending a Staircase by X. J. Kennedy
20. Otherwise: New and Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon
21. Elegy by Larry Levis (*)
22. The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths by Sandy Longhorn
23. Dismal Rock by Davis McCombs
24. Satisfied with Havoc by Jo McDougall
25. The Second Four Books of Poems by W. S. Merwin
26. The Collected Poems: 1931-1987 by Czesław Miłosz (*)
27. The Ants by Sawako Nakayasu
28. The Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov
29. Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye
30. Halflife by Meghan O’Rourke
31. The Body Mutinies by Lucia Perillo
32. Selected Poems by Francis Ponge (*)
33. Ornithologies by Joshua Poteat (*)
34. National Anthem by Kevin Prufer (*)
35. A Hummock in the Malookas by Matthew Rohrer
36. Transfer of Qualities by Martha Ronk (*)
37. Selected Poems by Mary Ruefle
38. The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg
39. Io at Night by Laurie Sheck
40. Indistinguishable from the Darkness by Charlie Smith (*)
41. Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
42. The Cosmopolitans by Donna Stonecipher
43. The Edge of Damage by Heather Swan
44. Or What We’ll Call Desire by Alexandra Teague
45. About Love and About Nothing Else by Toon Tellegen
46. Atlas by Katrina Vandenberg
47. The World’s Room by Joshua Weiner
48. Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems by Miller Williams
49. Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman
50. Above the River: The Complete Poems by James Wright