Sunday, February 22, 2009

20 Poetry Books That I Love Meme

Mari L'Esperance tagged me with this on Facebook:

20 Poetry Books That I Love

What are 20 poetry books (if there are twenty) that made you fall in love with poetry, the books that made you think: I want to do this, I need to do this. What are the books that kept you going? Don’t put down the books that you think you’re “supposed,” to like, but list the core ones, the ones that opened all of this up for you. Here’s my list (in no particular order):

1. The City in Which I Love You - Li-Young Lee
2. Residence On Earth - Pablo Neruda
3. Poems Retrieved - Frank O'Hara
4. The Open Boat - Garrett Hongo, Ed.
5. The Temperature of This Water - Ishle Yi Park
6. the ice worker sings and other poems - Andrés Montoya
7. The Simple Truth - Philip Levine
8. Selected Levis - Larry Levis
9. Paper Pavilion - Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
10. Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler - Juan Felipe Herrera
11. Skirt Full of Black - Sun Yung Shin
12. Angle of Yaw - Ben Lerner
13. Song - Brigit Pegeen Kelley
14. Stone Bow Prayer - Amy Uyematsu
15. Rose - Li-Young Lee
16. Say Goodnight - Timothy Liu
17. Here, Bullet - Brian Turner
18. Howl - Allen Ginsberg
19. 108 Zen Poems - Ko Un
20. Alabanza - Martín Espada

(After I made this list, I thought of more, including Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular).

* If you want to list yours, please do (and let me know so I can read it).

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