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)
5 comments:
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
I've got a couple more obvious but solid suggestions:
Residence on Earth, Pablo Neruda
Rose, Li-Young Lee
The Colossus and other poems,Sylvia Plath
Billy Collins is consistantly amazing.
I love Fulton's Felt as well.
A few reading suggestions:
Song, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Otherwise, Eleanor Wilner
Of Flesh and Spirit, Wang Ping
Great idea to get a jump on reading contemporary poetry. Here are some random ones, mostly first book collections
Fabulae by Joy Katz
Invisble Bride by Tony Toast
World's Tallest Disaster by Cate Marvin
Capatain Sails for Paradise by Sarah Mangusho
Search Party by William Matthews (Selected poems)
Field Guide by Robert Hass
Donald Justice's Collected Poems
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