[Janice D. Soderling]

This thread seems to have been forgotten. I have one vote left, but maybe some of the newer members would like to have a say.

There are 15 slots left.

[Gail White]

I'm glad you revived this, Janice, as somehow I had overlooked it.

Assuming that anthologies count...

For #86, I nominate the anthology PEGASUS DESCENDING (A Book of the Best Bad Verse), edited by James Camp, XJ Kennedy, and Keith Waldrop, published in 1971.

Because
a) We need more laughter in this world, and
b) Poets are way too damn serious if they're not watched.

[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Folks,

How nice that this thread is coming back to life! Eventually, we will hit 100, and then it might be fun to put the whole thing into list form ....

Tony

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Number 87
The Moscow and Voronezh Notebooks of Osip Mandelstam
published on paper in bitter and cold places and in the memory of Nadia Mandelstam. It is kinda two books but if as a poet you write your own death warrant in one and then record your sentence in the other, special arrangements must be made.

Number 88
Die Niemandsrose (The No-One's Rose) by Paul Celan 1963

Of course I only know the first in translation by Richard and Elizabeth McKane (Bloodaxe) and the second through reading the German (barely) alongside Festiner, Joris, and Hamburger but if this list went down without those names it would be wrong.

* I waffled between Celan books forever, or at least since this thread began.

[Wintaka]

Does light verse count? If yes, someone has to nominate the best known and best selling poetry tome (not counting nursery rhymes by Dr. Seuss) of the 20th century. It might as well be me:

89. "Songs of a Sourdough" by Robert Service

[John Whitworth]

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.

[William A. Baurle]

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.