Best Poems of 2017

Ernest J. Berry …… haiku “impressive name”

Blaise Cendrars …… The Formosa: Life

Bernard Eibond …… haiku “frog pond”

Carolyn Hall …… haiku “enough blossoms”

Yvonne Hardenbrook …… haiku “solstice afternoon”

Duriel E. Harris …… Self Portrait at the Millennium

Paul Hoover …… God’s Promises

Gary Hotham …… haiku “fog”

Takuboku Ishikawa …… “That story of an affair”

Byron Jackson …… haiku “everywhere”

Major Jackson …… Narcissus

Ling Ju Jung …… Night Reverie

James Longenbach …… Snow

Nikola Nilic …… haiku “moonlight”

Linda Noel …… Time Frame

H. F. Noyes …… haiku “subway posters”

W. F. Owen …… haiku “in the park”

Ron Padgett …… Album

Ron Padgett …… Alone and Not Alone

Ron Padgett …… The Ems Dispatch

Ron Padgett …… Nunc

Ron Padgett …… Postcards

Ron Padgett …… Tom and Jerry Graduate from High School

Carl Patrick …… haiku “fireflies”

Po Chu-I …… Aboard a Boat, Reading Yuan Ninth’s Poems

Po Chu-I …… Night on the West River

Jeffrey Rabkin …… haiku “after coming in”

Rachel Richardson …… The Horses

David Rollins …… haiku “this long journey”

John Sheirer …… haiku “talking in her sleep”

Doug Sherman …… haiku “long meeting”

Sun Yun Feng …… Riding at Daybreak

Anna Tambour …… haiku “preoccupied”

Rick Tarquinio …… haiku “winter night”

Wang An Shih …… The Plum Tree

Wang Chih-Huan …… Climbing White Stork Tower

Wei Ying-Wu …… Chuchou’s West Stream

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If this is your first visit to Dare I Read, welcome. If you’ve been here a few times you already know about my “Best Poems” lists. Today’s list consists of the poems I read in 2017 and decided I could not leave behind. As I read I keep handy a stack of placemarks. If I read a poem I want to read again, I pop in a placemark. I revisit the poem until it wears out for me, or until I decide I have to keep it. In the latter case I hand copy the poem into a looseleaf notebook.

The haiku comes primarily from anthologies published by Red Moon Press. I worked my way through what I could find in libraries. 

I’ve enjoyed Ron Padgett’s poems as I’ve encountered them here and there. This year I took on his books in chronological order. I was surprised to find that the copies held by the Berkeley Public Library were often checked out. There were even holds queues. For poetry! People waiting in line for poetry! It wasn’t until we caught up with Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson on DVD that I clued in on what was driving the popularity. The movie’s poet protagonist writes poems that are written by Ron Padgett. So there were some new interviews with Padgett based on his contributions to the film, which I also read. Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems also is freshly out. It’s big and thick. I got to it after I read the slim volumes, so I would only have to heft it to read poems I otherwise couldn’t find. In one of the interviews Padgett says when he met Adam Driver, the Paterson actor, Driver told Padgett he’d read the big Collected all the way through. Padgett seems to have been tempted to respond, “You didn’t have to do that.”