The print folks have started to weigh in on the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list and so the list has hit 100 titles. I'm busy hypertexting the list (click for the latest version, now over 170 titles) so folks can go see samples by the listed poets, get bio info, hear interviews etc. It is a work in progress, so why stop now? I'll continue to add to the list as suggestions come in and send free copies of Lilliput in appreciation. A special thanks to Ed Baker for his suggestions.
100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry
This page grew out of a number of postings on the Lilliput Review blog, Issa's Untidy Hut. The following list is culled from those postings and has become something of an ongoing project. If you have a suggestion of a title of a perfect or near perfect book of poems for this list and would like to receive the two current issues of Lillie for free (or have your current subscription extended), send your suggestion, along with your mailing address, to lilliputreview at gmail dot com (spelled out to avoid spam bots) or to the Lilliput snail mail address in the sidebar to the right.
The List
Chrysanthemum Love by Fay Aoyagi
Pencil Flowers by Johnny Baranski
Basho And His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda
Silence In The Snowy Fields by Robert Bly
The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski
Thirst by Patrick Carrington
Places/Everyone by Jim Daniels
And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis
Variations by Bill Deemer
Revolutionary Letters by Diane Di Prima
Griffon by Stephen Dobyns
Hello La Jolla by Ed Dorn
Miracles of the Sainted Earth by Victoria Edwards Tester
Things Stirring Together or Far Away by Larry Eiger
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hand by Martin Espada
Against the Forgetting by Hans Faverey
Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlighetti
West-Running Brook by Robert Frost
Poet in New York by Frederico Garcia Lorca (trans. by B. Bellitt)
The Haiku Anthology, 3rd edition, edited by Cor van den Heuvel
Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison
book of resurrection by mark hartenbach
Essential Haiku edited by Robert Hass
Working on My Death Chant by Albert Huffstickler
Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
A Few Flies and I: Haiku by Issa
Jade Mountain: anthology of Chinese Poetry, ed. by W. Bynner
Lost World by Randall Jarrell
The Beginning of the End by Robinson Jeffers
Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac
The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go by Eliot Khalil Wilson
Knock Upon Silence by Carolyn Kizer
The Essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight
Geography of the Forehead by Ron Koertge
Pleasure Dome by Yusef Komunyakaa
The Blood of the Air by Philip Lamantia
O Taste and See by Denise Levertov
The Sorrow Dance by Denise Levertov
What Work Is by Philip Levine
For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell
Verso by Pattie McCarthy
dogwood & honeysuckle by john martone
ordinary fool by john martone
Asian Figures by W. W. Merwin
The Vixen by W. S. Merwin
Forever Home by Lenard D. Moore
The Dillinger Books (various) by Todd Moore
Naked Poetry: Recent American Poetry, ed. by Stephen Berg
Next Room of the Dream by Howard Nemerov
The Granite Pail by Lorine Niedecker
100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda
100 Poems from the Chinese, ed. by Kenneth Rexroth
The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds
Strike Sparks by Sharon Olds
The Distances by Charles Olson
In Cold Hell, In Thicket by Charles Olson
Spearmint and Rosemary by Charles Olson
The Ink Dark Moon by Onono Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, -translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani
Primitive by George Oppen
Right under the big sky, I don't wear a hat by Hosai Ozaki, translated by Hiroaki Sato
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Droles de Journal by Carl Rakoski
Raising the Dead by Ron Rash
The Waiting Room at the End of the World by Jeff Rath
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese tr. by Kenneth Rexroth
New Poems (1908), the Other Part by Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Snow)
The Concrete River by Luis Rodriquez
Say Uncle by Kay Ryan
Poems of a Mountain Home by Saigyo
The Kingdom by Frank Samperi
Quadrifariam by Frank Samperi
Spiritual Necessity by Frank Samperi
Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg
Grass and Tree Cairn by Santoka, translated by Hiroaki Sato
The Morning of a Poem by James Schuyler
Buffalo Head Solos by Tim Seibles
Hammerlock by Tim Seibles
Selected Poems by Anne Sexton
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Elements of San Joaquin by Gary Soto
Harmonium by Wallace Stevens
Collected Poems - Dylan Thomas
Here, Bullet by Brian Turner
Goodstone by Fred Voss
Argonaut Rose by Diane Wakoski
Cap of Darkness by Diane Wakoski
Collected Greed Parts 1-13 by Diane Wakoski
Inside the Blood Factory by Diane Wakoski
Scenes of Life at the Capital by Philip Whalen
Severance Pay by Philip Whalen
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Spring and All by William Carlos Williams
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
Sinking of Clay City by Robert Wrigley
Littlefoot by Charles Wright
The Tower by W.B. Yeats
Don
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10 comments:
Don, great list! Gives me a lot of books to check out!
You've set yourself a task here, especially when you start adding these links. But it's a fantastic project and I'm glad someone is working on it. This is going to turn out to be a really important accomplishment.
Greg, thanks I actually have more to add already ... but will pause a bit at this milestone of a number ...
Charles, yes, sir, it's a task and a half. I've been working on it in between the other 30 projects I'm doing today ... once I get all the links up, I'll probably make an announcement because, I have to tell ya, I've found some pretty amazing things.
Don
Dear Don:
Congratulations on over one-hundred "Near Perfect Books Of Poetry"! What a wonderful project; your efforts are so appreciated by your readership. I think it's an amazingly interactive contribution to poetry.
So! I had hoped to help you along in reaching one-hundred titles, but I guess now we will simply go further over the hump. By the way, I am also very pleased to hear that you've received a number of nominations by mail rather than by email . . . so everybody can participate if they wish.
My three nominations are:
"Crow" (Ted Hughes)
"Lord Weary's Castle" (Robert Lowell)
"Station Island" (Seamus Heaney)
When the project began, I really wanted to include nominations by these three poets, but didn't at that time. One of the reasons was that I could not figure out which books by the three poets I would select. I still haven't quite figured it out, as each poet has other books I greatly admire. So these nominations are representative.
Thanks again Don!
Jeffery
Jeffrey, thanks. I'm working on hypertexting the list and so will be adding more titles once I get that near completion. I'm just going to keep it going.
Don
ditto on what is said re: this project...
am
re:discovering my "roots"
and dusting of my books/memories
and, speaking of "roots"
Robert Duncan's Roots and Branches (1964)
and of Ted Hughes' CROW
( you got the 1971 edition with the Leonard Baskin cover?) a poem in Bob Creeley's The Collected Poems
titled The Crow
and of course that "dirty old monk" Ikkyu Sojun's
CROW WITH NO MOUTH
back to Hughes his
Birthday Letters and Tales from OVID
sometimes
I get so excited:
it's not so easy
being myself!
Yeah, list reminds me of books I want to find. Thank you for making it.
Also, thanks for the mail you recently sent to me--it arrived yesterday--and I will have new zines soon! Can't wait to send them to you!
Laura-Marie: Thanks for the kind words and I'll keep an eye out for your new zine work.
Don
Jeffrey, on the off-chance you subscribed to replies to this post, I'm not sure if this is Jeffrey S. or Jeffrey W. or Jeffrey B. I'd like to extend your subscription.
Don
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