52. New and Collected Poems - U.A. Fanthorpe
 

Although this collection came out early this century, the poems were written in the 20th century and with few exceptions all were published then. Besides which all the rules set for this thread have been broken shortly after they were made.

I chose this collection because U.A. Fanthorpe was a role model for vast numbers of women poets on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere during the time period quaintly called "Women's Liberation".

Here is a link to one of many moving tributes written at the time of her death.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/book...arol-ann-duffy
UA Fanthorpe inspired generations of women poets

The generosity, skill and emotional intelligence of UA Fanthorpe transformed women's poetry in Britain, (...)

But it is clearly true that without Ursula Fanthorpe, herself tipped at various points as both laureate and Oxford professor of poetry, women's poetry in Britain would differ, in ways we can only loosely guess at, from the vibrant and various forms it takes today.

Here is a link to a longish poem which hit me like a ton of bricks when I first read it, decades ago.

http://english.emory.edu/classes/pai...s/uccello.html

53. The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt
 

My reason for nominating this is because she carries on the tradition of eloquence and detail in her craftsmanship, a tradition that includes Elizabeth Bíshop, Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore.

You can't take in her work "on-the-fly" so to speak. You need to sit and savor, to partake and digest.

Her dexterity in poem-making, her care about the factual groundwork to which the poems are anchored, her precise vocabulary and perfect grammar, in short, her skills as a poet.

Here is one I particularly like:

Meadowlark Country

Speaking of the skylark in a New England classroom--
nonbird, upward-twirler, Old-World hyperbole--
I thought how the likewise ground-nesting
western meadowlark, rather than soar unsupported
out over the cattle range at daybreak, takes up
its post on a fence post. I heard them out there,
a liquid millennium arising from the still
eastward-looking venue of the dark--

like the still-evolving venue of the young, the faces
eastward-looking, bright with a mute,
estranged, ancestral puzzlement.

The best poets don't necessarily write the best books.

The reason this thread interests is that poems (the way we measure poets) are not the same as books. A book can have qualities none of the poems have on their own. A favorite poem surrounded by weaker ones can create a book we like less than one that doesn't include any single poem that measures up to our favorite in the weaker book. If poems and poetry books were the same thing, Tony simply could have asked whom we considered the best poets of the century (or which books they wrote). If he had, many of us would have ignored the thread.

54. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994
 

Langston Huges was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry and paved the way for all the slam and spoken word that came after.

As a member of the Harlem Renaissance he was also a role model for many black writers of his own time and in coming decades. He was one (of several) who helped redefine how the literary world looked at black literature and blacks in literature. That word "redefine" is important because change can only come about when individuals in a group (women's movement, blacks, latino, you name it) redefine how they view themselves and their collective.

Before "black is beautiful" was coined as a catchword, he wrote in "My People" (October 1923)[):

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

I have one nomination left, but there are so many I'd like to name for one reason or another that I think I will not nominate any other books. Unless something very unexpected occurs. (Crossed fingers)

Well, Philip (post 126), the rules seem to have been both bent and broken along the way, with the approval of the Thread-Owner.

If we are going to be sticklers we might have to start the protocol by defining "Best". Whose best? Or does best mean craftsmanship? Does best mean a sea-change in the craft--content or form?

I think we are happily stuck in the mire of indiviualism here, and if people give the reasons for why they think best is best, I am willing to accept lots of leeway.

55. The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds
 

This is the first book by Sharon Olds I read, which hooked me so that I have had to read every other book she wrote, before or since. She has an honesty that makes me gasp, especially in terms of dealing with subjects that others turn away from and in focusing on her own life. I think she has taken a lot of flak for sensationalism, but she hasn't backed off from her uncompromising and, I would say, searing honesty. She was a lot more direct about sexuality than any other female poet I had encountered, and it is interesting that she has been attacked for that, too. Like Sylvia Plath she has become a lightning rod. But she changed the way I thought about what one can write about in a poem, and I find myself moved by her courage even when she makes me uncomfortable.

Susan

I got it wrong first time people, but I got it right for Wright second time. Didn't I?

56. View With A Grain of Sand, by Wislawa Szymborska
 

I had never heard of Szymborska until she won the 1996 Nobel Prize. I bought this book, a selection of her works from 1957 to 1993, and I fell in love with her immediately. I have three other volumes of hers, but this one remains my favorite for its consistent superb quality.

Szymborska has an instantly recognizable voice: unpretentious, even chatty, self-deprecating, wry, puckish, a bit philosophical, kind, and so very life-affirming. She is that rare poet whose books you’ll give your friends at Christmas or on birthdays – and later learn that they did the same. As I did, in fact, learn.

She was amazed by, and wondered at, the singularity of life, of every life, and when I read her I think of Dickinson’s answer to TW Higginson when he asked if she ever felt the want of employment or social engagement: “the mere sense of living is joy enough”. Szymborska has a way with metaphor that often makes it seem light and amusing, but laden with meaning, at the same time. But for all her intelligence, for me what most comes through in reading Szymborska is the vast demesne of her heart; reading her, I feel the expansion of my own.

Under One Small Star

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.


http://www.amazon.com/View-Grain-San...awa+szymborska

Thanks, Michael, for listing Wislawa Szymborska. I agree fully with all the praise you give her.

I have her work in Swedish and one book in English translation (Miracle Fair: Selected poems of Wislawa Szymborska , Joanna Trzeciak which won the Heldt prize for Translation in Slavic Studies.

The poem you offered us (thanks) differs somewhat from the one I have (in the above book) and I wonder who the translator is. It is always interesting to see how different translators render a poet.

Added in Sorry, I realized I could check your link and find out. It is by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. (sorry about not having the Polish alphabet to write the names)

Michael, I agree wholeheartedly on Szymborska, and the Cavanagh/Baranczak translations are the best. She may end up having more universal appeal than any other poet who lived into the 21st century. "Nonrequired Reading", which is nonfiction, is also brilliant. Great choice.