PW released its best books of 2010 list today (linked to this post) and we here in the poetry department want to make sure you saw the five poetry books we picked as this year’s best:
Nox
Anne Carson (New Directions)
This is a fold-out replication, a kind of scroll, of the handmade notebook that Carson made to mourn her brother’s death.
The Eternal City
Kathleen Graber (Princeton)
Graber is the kind of poet who thinks out loud. What may at first seem like casual conversation with the self, however, turns out to be deep philosophical thinking.
By the Numbers
James Richardson (Copper Canyon)
Richardson is the best aphorist writing in English, and he’s a hell of a poet, too. Both forms are represented in this wonderful book.
WaitC.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Fear of death has sent some lightning through veteran poet Williams’s poems. These are urgent remembrances of a life’s regrets and what hopes still survive into old age.
Come On All You GhostsMatthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon)
Zapruder’s third book mixes the kind of hip swagger he’s known for with an increasingly earnest engagement with the people and things he loves.
