Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Poetry Book Lists

Bookless in Boston mobilizes the poets and the poetry readers...

I took a look at the reading list post from Encino Man and read through all of the great comments to assist in the expansion of his repertoire for fiction. It was great to see such an influx of ideas and I added several of the books to my personal "must read" list.

I, however, plan on applying for an MFA in poetry, and while I feel like I have a pretty secure reading list (and can't pick up a book without a pencil to make notations in every margin) I'm always looking for new collections, as we all should. Some poetry reading lists are entirely apt but when I looked for reading lists strictly built of contemporary writers out there working and writing now I couldn't really find one.

So my humble request is really a request out to your other faithful readers. Can you post up your trusted reading lists' websites for us again, and any specific to poetry you might know of? And then lets see what kind of list us readers can build!

I can start one off with a few of my personal recommendations (I tried to represent a variety of styles):

Alice Fulton: Felt (every collection is so so good but this one is just cover-to-cover Amazing)
Gerald Stern: Last Blue
Richard Blanco: City of a Hundred Fires
Adrienne Rich: Fox
Maggie Nelson: Shiner

Poets' prose about poetry:

Alice Fulton: Feeling as a foreign language
Adrienne Rich: Arts of the Possible
CD Wright: Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil (cross-genre really, some prose-type pieces some poems)


2 comments:

BlueVelveeta said...

Yay! Thanks for the recs. On top of the older stuff I mentioned in the other thread, I'll add:

Memory at These Speeds, Jane Miller
Elegy, Larry Levis
Furious Cooking, Maureen Seton
and I love love love....
Ultima Thule, Davis McCombs

For poets on poetry, I'll see your Rich and raise you 2 Hughes:

"Words and Experience," Ted Hughes
"How to Be a Bad Writer (in Ten Easy Lessons)," Langston Hughes

Anonymous said...

Billy Collins is consistantly amazing.