And why not? I suppose it has to be a single poet. If it was not I would nominate all three Penguin Books of Comic and Curious Verse. If you don't have them then buy then second-hand. You will certainly not regret it. If that is not allowed then what about Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verse which wins by a nose from the Collected Poems of G.K. Chesterton. Wonderful men! We shall not look upon their like again.

# 90 Carolina Chansons and Legends of the Low Country
 

By DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen. Put out by MacMillan in 1922. A small but potent book of poems where you'll see such writing as:

~

Here pock-marked Black Beard covenanted Bonnet
To slit the Dons' throats at St. Augustine,
And bussed light ladies, unknown to this sonnet,
Whose names, no doubt, would rime with Magdalene.
And English parsons, who had lost their fames,
Sat tippling wine as spicy as their joke,
Larding bald texts with bets on cocking mains,
And whiffing pipes churchwardens used to smoke.
Here macaronis, hands a-droop with laces,
Dealt knave to knave in picquet or écarté,
In coats no whit less scarlet than their faces,
While bullies hiccuped healths to King and Party,
And Yankee slavers, in from Barbadoes,
Drove flinty bargains with keen Huguenots.


by Hervey Allen, and stuff like this:

~

All in the sullied hours,
While the pirates stood away
Out of the murk and horror
In a sheer white burst of spray,

Leaving the wreck to settle
Under its winding sheet,
I felt the city shudder
And stir beneath my feet.

Thrilling against the morning,
As audible as song,
I heard the city waken
Out of her night of wrong.

That was a day to cherish
When Rhett and a gallant few
Summoned the best among us;
Called for a daring crew.

New and raw at the business,
To the smithy's roar and clang,
We drove our aching muscles
And as we worked we sang,

Until one blowing morning
With summer on the sea,
The Henry to the windward,
The Sea Nymph down alee,

Flecking the wide Atlantic
With a flaring, lacy track,
We went, as glad as the winds are glad,
To buy our honor back.

by DuBose Heyward.

Oh crap, I was under the impression that the limit of titles nominated by each poster had been lifted, but on re-reading the latter part of the thread it seems I may have misunderstood. If so, just delete my vote for #90, though I highly recommend the book, which you can download for free at Amazon for Kindle and at Gutenberg.

Thanks William. Cool poems and I will go check out that book.

#91
 

I retract this nomination. So Dean's would be #91

Alright then ...

the centurion in me recommends a book by David Berman, titled Actual Air, 1999, Grove Press, Open City Books.

No doubt, this list is really good but I bet the thread here, or the list, is most notable -- as most lists are or have a tendency to be -- for what/who it leaves out.

Hi Dean,
Of course! Also, I thought it might be interesting to see what the list would look like when nominated by a formally-inclined community.

Best, Tony