Meme: 20 Books of Poetry, etc.

I can't tell you how many times people have linked me for this meme, so here it is. The books are in no order . . . no real hierarchy. They're just the books that have influenced my work up till now:


1. The Book of Nightmares--Galway Kinnell
2. Ariel--Sylvia Plath
3. Winter Stars--Larry Levis
4. The World Doesn't End--Charles Simic
5. Dream of the Unified Field--Jorie Graham
6. Rose--Li-Young Lee
7. Teodora Luna's Two Kisses--Alberto Rios
8. The Groom Falconer--Norman Dubie
9. The Badlands of Desire--Beckian Fritz Goldberg
10. The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz--Octavio Paz
11. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair--Pablo Neruda
12. The Branch Will Not Break--James Wright
13. The Wasteland--T.S. Eliot
14. What Work Is--Phillip Levine
15. The Redshifting Web--Arthur Sze
16. The Colors of Desire--David Mura
17. Models of the Universe--Ed. Stuart Friebert & David Young
18. The Open Boat--Ed. Garret Hongo
19. El Grupo McDonalds--Nick Carbo
20. For the Union Dead--Robert Lowell

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Again, these are in no hierarchy--just the order I thought of 'em. I added two anthologies 'cause they really did influence me greatly.

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I'll post another list later for the 20 albums--another Facebook meme I was tagged with.

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And right now, my current spin:

Bowerbirds. "In Our Talons."