Best Poems of 2007

As I read a book of poems I keep handy a stack of bookmarks. Should I read a poem I want to revisit I tuck one of these scraps of paper in beside it. I read marked poems several times. After I’ve finished the book and am ready to put it away, I decide whether I can leave the poem behind. If I can’t I copy it out by hand in a notebook. I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years.

These are the poems I copied out in 2007:

Allen Ginsberg … “America”
Amy Allara … “so I would be ready to set about”
David Antin … “Endangered Nouns”
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa … “Third Lesson”
F.J. Bergmann … “Atonal Bisque”
Edward Smallfield … “Secret Lives”
Sara Littlecrow-Russell … “Russian Roulette, Indian Style”
Nikolai Gumilev … “A Baby Elephant”
Pablo Neruda … “Dream Horse”
Sylvia Plath … “Snakecharmer”
Sylvia Plath … “Moonrise”
Sylvia Plath … “In Plaster”
Spencer Selby … selections from “Text From My Visual Book”
Michele Ruby … “Apostrophe”
Iain Crichton Smith … “You Are at the Bottom of My Mind”
Ibaragi Noriko … “When I Was Prettiest in My Life”
W.S. Graham … “Night’s Fall Unlocks the Dirge of the Sea”
Kyle Kaufman … “fog the fold the name the”
Vicente Aleixandre … “The Bottom of the Well”
Else Lasker-Schuler … “Parting”
Yannis Ristos … from “Romiossini (VI)”
John Olson … “The Conservation of Strangeness”
D.L. Emblen … “A Rule to Keep One from Losing a Mountain”
Laynie Brown … from “Daily Sonnets”
Spencer Selby … “Original Veneer”
Emily Dickinson … “914: I cannot be ashamed”
Anna Deavere Smith … “Your Heads in Shame”
Larry Kearney … “The Soul”
Wang Wei … “Magnolia Basin”
Srikanth Reddy … “Circle (I)”
Kirmen Uribe … “The Cherry Tree”
Wang Shih-chen … “Arriving After Rain at the Temple of Heavenly Peace”
Mei Yao-ch’en … “Eating Shepherd’s-purse”
Liu Tsung-yuan … “On Covering the Bones of Chang Chin, the Hired Man”
Essex Hemphill … “Civil Servant”

Best Poems of 2006

Best Poems of 2005

Best Poems of 2004