I have been waffling on the whole collected/selected vs. individual volume issue. I get the argument for the individual slim volume, and I am a fan of a well put together volume. But, when I go back to my offending entries -- the Robinson Complete, the Hugo collected, and the Haiku Anthology -- I have trouble making the switch.
The trouble comes from a personal and emotional connection to the books, and I think that is what the thread was calling for. I came to Hugo, for example, through this collected. And though it is long, I read through it like a novel. There were "chapters" -- individual volumes -- that were marvelous, and could easily be entered on this list, but the whole book was what "wowed" me. The Haiku Anthology is even easier for me to defend -- it was a revelation to me as a reader and would be haiku poet, and there is no alternative to it.
Robinson is more complicated. I came to Robinson through selecteds and collecteds before I knew what his individual book were. My impulse to pick "Children of the Night" was because of its "importance" more than any personal experience with it, which I think is one of the worries about picking selecteds and collecteds. But it is the poems from that volume and several others, plus the later long works -- some of which Nemo mentioned -- that cumulatively hooked me. The Complete Poems holds them all.
So, I am sticking with what I entered.
David R.
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Threaded Mode
