The Best Poems of 2020

Ever Blue … Joseph Salvatore Aversano

Roberta Beary … haiku “on my finger”

Kari Davidson … haiku “evening sunlight”

Eli S. Evans … The Liberation of Spirit

Gilles Fabre … two haiku “let me pick you off” and “in the old iron pot”

Allen Ginsberg … haiku “a dandelion seed floats”

Michael Gizzi … “A tea shower eavesdrops on a treefort …”

Ty Hadman … haiku “knothole”

Doris Heitmeyer … haiku “the sound of night rain”

Anita Krumins … haiku “methodical husband”

D. H. Lawrence … All Souls

Hsieh Ling-yun … Overnight at Stone Gate

Ippyo … haiku “what cools us are red lanterns”

Ivan I. Ivancan … haiku “stars”

Michael McNierney … haiku “after therapy”

M. M. Nichols … haiku “walking downhill”

Natalia L. Rudychev … two haiku “the world” and “losing my shadow in his”

Masaya Saito … haiku “breaking off an icicle”

Mongane Wally Serote … Introit

Helen L. Shaffer … haiku “new blanket”

Shi-wu Ch’ing-Kung (Stonehouse) … Mountain Poem #67 “lunch in my mountain kitchen”

W. D. Snodgrass … Looking

Stefan Theodoru … haiku “sparrow on the wing”

Lequita Vance … haiku “alone on the road”

Wang An-shih … Events on Chungshan

Joyce E. Young … How Will You Step Forward?

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As I read a book I keep a batch of placemarks ready should I come across something I want to revisit. After I’ve marked a poem and come back to read it again, I sometimes read it again and again, usually over the course of several days. If I decide I don’t want to leave it behind, I hand copy it into a loose leaf notebook. I’ve been doing this since 1989. Some years I copy out many poems; some years only a handful. 

With the new year I read aloud (usually just to myself) the poems I’ve copied out in the previous year. Then I type up the list and post it on the blog.

Are these the “best” poems I read all year? I only make that claim because it’s fun to. It’s a bigger claim than “personal favorite.” Any editor who claims their choices are the “best” of what they had offered to them isn’t telling the truth. The more candid ones will say they publish What They Like. 

So these are What I Like, or What I Liked the Most in 2020. I read a lot of poetry — and I do like a lot of it. The many poems I liked but which didn’t make it into my notebook were poems I managed to talk myself out of copying out. That doesn’t make them worse. Just so you know.