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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Here You Go ~ My 20 Books of Poetry



20 poetry books that made me fall in love with poetry (or that made me continue loving it).

These are in no particular order.

Rose - Li-Young Lee
She Had Some Horses - Joy Harjo
The Complete Poems - Elizabeth Bishop
The Book of Light - Lucille Clifton
Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon - Pablo Neruda
American Primitive - Mary Oliver
Country Music - Charles Wright
The Master Letters - Lucie Brock-Broido
And Her Soul Out of Nothing - Olena Kalytiak Davis
Elegy - Larry Levis
Asylum - Quan Barry
The Portable Walt Whitman
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Glass, Irony, and God - Anne Carson
Fabulae - Joy Katz
Salvation Blues - Rodney Jones
Ariel - Sylvia Plath
Opened Ground - Seamus Heaney
Grace Notes - Rita Dove
The Complete Poems - Emily Dickinson

There are many more recent books that come to mind, but I want to wait and see what kind of staying power these new collections have for me. Perhaps I'll return to this list in 5 years and see what pops to the surface

In looking at these titles, I see the faces of my past teachers and friends who introduced me to these books, creating the connections that form a web around my bookshelf. I also remember the random discoveries in bookstores in unfamiliar cities.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Hi, Sandy.

Your list made me smile. The first one brings back many, many good memories. "To Donna, again."

Michelle

Sandy Longhorn said...

Ah, Donna!

Hope you and the family are doing well, Michelle.

Sandy