This weekend the "Near Perfect Books of Poetry" list hit the milestone number of 250. It all started back just two years ago and has grown to quite an expansive list. It even spawned a "German Near Perfect Books of Poetry" list. The last two volumes added this weekend were two books by Gary Snyder. Hard to believe the list had come this far without an appearance by one of the 20th century's predominant poets.
A nice byproduct of all this is I've given away hundreds of issues of Lilliput Review to those making suggestions for the list. The offer still stands - 2 free current issues of Lillie for a suggestion of a near perfect book of poetry. There are many poetry readers out there and, no doubt, some of you will notice that your favorite volume of poetry is not included. Here's the list. Something missing? Let me know, either via a comment or directly at
Later this week, I'll be adding one of my "new" favorite books of poems, Paradise Poems by Gerald Stern. And, yes, I was moved.
The List
The Clean Dark by Robert Adamson
The Golden Bird by Robert Adamson
Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova
The Fall — Jordie Albiston
A Nostalgist's Map of America by Agha Shaid Ali
Chrysanthemum Love by Fay Aoyagi
The Double Dream of Spring by John Ashbery
Rivers and Mountains by John Ashbery
Some Trees by John Ashbery
Salute--to Singing by Gennady Aygi
Pencil Flowers by Johnny Baranski
Back Roads to Far Towns by Bashô, translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu
Bashô And His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda
On Love and Barley by Bashô, translated by Lucien Styrk
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire (any & all translations)
Weeping for Lost Babylon — Eric Beach
Complete Poems, 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop
Silence In The Snowy Fields by Robert Bly
Turkish Pears in August by Robert Bly
Kerrisdale Elegies by George Bowering
The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan
Poems of Madness & Angel by Ray Bremser
Life Supports by William Bronk
Moment to Moment by David Budbill
The Last Night of the Earth Poems — Charles Bukowski
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski
Complete Poems by Basil Bunting
Dreaming of Robert de Niro — Grant Caldwell
Thirst by Patrick Carrington
Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey by Hayden Carruth
Fear of Dreaming by Jim Carroll
Woman Haiku Master by Chiyo-ni
California Poems by James Koller
The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
Selected Poems by Robert Creeley
Places/Everyone by Jim Daniels
Totem by Luke Davies
Forth A Raven by Christina Davis
And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis
Variations by Bill Deemer
Loba by Diane Di Prima (Wingbow, Penguin)
Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima
Griffon by Stephen Dobyns
Hello La Jolla by Ed Dorn
Small Favors by Barbara Drake
Space Before A by Barbara Drake
Streets of the Long Voyage — Michael Dransfield
Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry, tr. J. P. Seaton & D. Maloney
The Caged Tiger by Louis Dudek
Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy
Roots and Branches by Robert Duncan
What Goes On: Selected & New Poems by Stephen Dunn
Miracles of the Sainted Earth by Victoria Edwards Tester
Things Stirring Together or Far Away by Larry Eigner
The World and Its Streets by Larry Eigner
Then, And Now by Ted Enslin
The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot
Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot
Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hand by Martin Espada
Tryst by Angie Estes
Donna Juanita and the Love of Boys, by Gabrielle Everall
Against the Forgetting by Hans Faverey
Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlighetti
The Whole Song: Selected Poems by Vincent Ferrini
Gathering the Tribes by Carolyn Forché
From the Country of Eight Islands, ed. by Hiroaki Sato & B. Watson
From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright, ed. by B. ---Hendrickson & R. Johnson
West-Running Brook by Robert Frost
A bud — Claire Gaskin
Poet in New York by Frederico Garcia Lorca (trans. by B. Bellitt)
Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert
Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg
The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
Insects of South Corvallis by Charles Goodrich
Without by Donald Hall
The Haiku Anthology, 3rd edition, edited by Cor van den Heuvel
Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison
Braided Creek: a Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser
book of resurrection by mark hartenbach
Essential Haiku edited by Robert Hass
Station Island by Seamus Heaney
Best of Adrian Henri
Barbarian in the Garden by Zbigniew Herbert
Phosphorus by Alicia Hokanson
Spring Essence by Xuan Hu'o'ng Ho, translated by J. Balaban
The Never Ending by Andrew Hudgins
Working on My Death Chant by Albert Huffstickler
Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Crow by Ted Hughes
Tread the Dark by David Ignatow
The Dumpling Field by Kobayashi Issa, trans. by Lucien Styrk
A Few Flies and I: Haiku by Issa
Inch by Inch by Issa, translated by Nanao Sakaki
Jade Mountain: anthology of Chinese Poetry, ed. by W. Bynner
Lost World by Randall Jarrell
The Beginning of the End by Robinson Jeffers
The Book of the Green Man by Ronald Johnson
Hojoki by Kamo Chomei
The Ancient Rain by Bob Kaufman
Flowers of a Moment by Ko Un
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
Three Way Tavern by Ko Hun
The Art of Love by Kenneth Koch
New Addresses by Kenneth Koch
Geography of the Forehead by Ron Koertge
Pleasure Dome by Yusef Komunyakaa
All This Everyday by Joanne Kyger
The Blood of the Air by Philip Lamantia
O Taste and See by Denise Levertov
The Sorrow Dance by Denise Levertov
Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell
For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell
The Lost Lunar Baedeker by Mina Loy
Verso by Pattie McCarthy
Touch to My Tongue by Daphne Marlatt
dogwood & honeysuckle by john martone
ordinary fool by john martone
After All by William Matthews
The Nice Narrows: New and Selected Poems by Samuel Menashe
The Lice by W. S. Merwin
The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin
At Dusk Iridescent by Thomas Meyer
Sixty-Seven Poems for Downtrodden Saints by Jack Micheline
Temple Dusk by Mitsu Suzuki
Cuttlefish Bones by Eugenio Montale
Forever Home by Lenard D. Moore
The Dillinger Books (various) by Todd Moore
Deadly Nightshade by Barbara Moraff
The Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern
Cloudless at First by Hilda Morley
Eyes: the Poetry of Jim Morrison
The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story by Rusty Morrison
Naked Poetry: Recent American Poetry, ed. by Stephen Berg
New American Poetry, 1945-1960, ed. by Donald Allen
Twenty Love Poems & A Song of Despair, Pablo Neruda tr. Merwin
Next Room of the Dream by Howard Nemerov
Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh
Still Water by bpnichol
The Granite Pail by Lorine Niedecker
My Friend Tree by Lorine Niedecker
100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda
Collected Poems by Frank O'Hara
Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
American Primitive by Mary Oliver
Dream Work by Mary Oliver
Owl and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver
West Wind: Poems & Prose Poems by Mary Oliver
Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing, translated by Sam Hamill
Why Not by Joel Oppenheimer
100 Poems from the Chinese, ed. by Kenneth Rexroth
The Dead and the Living 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, trans. by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani
The Yellow Floor by Gil Ott
Right under the big sky, I don't wear a hat by Hosai Ozaki, tr. Hiroaki Sato
Great Balls of Fire by Ron Padgett
Notes Towards a Family by John Perlman
Three Years Rings by John Perlman
Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
Plath: Poems by Sylvia Plath (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)
Collected Early Poems by Ezra Pound
The Yuan Chen Variations by F. T. Prince
Collected Poems by Sally Purcell
Droles de Journal by Carl Rakoski
The Waiting Room at the End of the World by Jeff Rath
The Heart's Garden, The Garden's Heart by Kenneth Rexroth
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese tr. by Kenneth Rexroth
Book of Images by Rainer Maria Rilke
New Poems (1908), the Other Part by Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Snow)
Uncollected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Edward Snow)
The Concrete River by Luis Rodriquez
Rainswayed Nights by Max Ryan
Awesome Nightfall by Saigyo
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
Investigative Poetry by Ed Sanders
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
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Itinerary by Reginald Shepherd
Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror by Nathan Shepherdson
Selected Poems by Masaoka Shiki
Axe Handles by Gary Snyder
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
Elements of San Joaquin by Gary Soto
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford
China Basin by Clemens Starck
Journeyman's Wages by Clemens Starck
Traveling Incognito by Clemens Starck
The Steel Crickert, variations/translations by Stephen Berg
The Color Wheel by Timothy Steele
New Math by Cole Swenson
Poems New and Collected by Wisława Szymborska translated by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh
View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska
Poems to Eat by Takuboku, translated by Carl Sesar
Memoir of a Hawk by James Tate
Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate
Collected Poems - Dylan Thomas
Bittersweet by James Tipton
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
Helping the Dreamer by Anne Waldman
Hermit Poems by Lew Welch
Scenes of Life at the Capital by Philip Whalen
Severance Pay by Philip Whalen
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Blues and Roots/Rue and Bluets by Jonathan Williams
Paterson by William Carlos Williams
Spring and All by William Carlos Williams
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
Sinking of Clay City by Robert Wrigley
The Beforelife by Franz Wright
Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright
The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright.
Selected Poems by James Wright
This Journey by James Wright
Radiant Silhouette by John Yau
Elegy on Toy Piano by Dean Young
River of Stars by Yosano Akiko, tr. S. Hamill & K. Matsui Gibson
Where Time Goes by Sander Zulaufeven Mount Fuji
makes the list...
New Year's inventoryIssa
translated by David G. Lanoue
best,
Don
Posts
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8 comments:
congrats on the 250! can't believe it was 2 years ago when you started it....
i think once i finish "Summer of Proust" this year, i may take a stab at reading this list. Thanks for creating it!
Greg, yup, time flies - the 1 year anniversary for the Sunday Service is just around the corner, too.
Jay, Summer of Proust sounds like a great project ... every time I read another crappy post-modern bullshit modern novel I wonder why don't I just read Proust again?
Don:
As a(nother) service to your readers, you should post a list of crappy post-modern bullshit modern novels.
Thanks.
JH
And I have so few of these. I guess that's good when you think of all the good reading I can now look forward to.
Jim,
I don't think I have enough bandwidth for that list. Hardy and Proust are looking awful glitzy right now.
Thanks, Charles, as always.
Not to spoil the party, but I found Rexroth's "100 Poems from the Chinese" listed twice. (The second listing is a little further down in the list, with the title spelled out, i.e. "One Hundred Poems..." The actual book gives the title as "100 Poems from the Chinese," the first way it's listed here.
My suggestions for the list:
The Movie at the End of the World by Thomas McGrath
Hard Country by Sharon Doubiago
She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo
The Republic of Poetry by Martin Espada
As Is by Sheryl Noethe
Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath edited by John Bradley
A disclosure on the last item above -- the anthology Eating the Pure Light includes one poem by myself, along with poems by some 70 other contributors.
Lyle
Thanks very much for the correction, which I've made. I've added Gerald Stern's "Paradise Poems" to the list, as I threatened to do in the post, to keep the balance and, in fact, have about 7 more suggestions since this post went up which I will be adding later this week.
I very much appreciate the close reading.
thanks,
Don
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