The National Book Award books are a little too "out there" for me -- they seem to reward the most avant-garde literary works in a given year -- but I figure a stretch in the poetry department is good for the soul. More about the prize here, if you're interested: National Book Award Winners, by category.
It also gives me something else to run down in bookstores, which is a good thing. Not that I need an excuse to spend more time browsing the shelves!
Green means I'm still seeking it. Blue means it's on the TBR shelf, perhaps even languishing there -- in a good way, of course. Poetry and leisure go together, don't they?
1950: Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems - William Carlos Williams
1951: The Auroras of Autumn - Wallace Stevens
1952: Collected Poems - Marianne Moore
1953: Collected Poems, 1917-1952 - Archibald MacLeish
1954: Collected Poems - Conrad Aiken
1955: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens - Wallace Stevens
1956: The Shield of Achilles - W.H. Auden
1957: Things of the World - Richard Wilbur
1958: Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 - Robert Penn Warren
1959: Words for the Wind - Theodore Roethke
1960: Life Studies - Robert Lowell
1961: The Woman at the Washington Zoo - Randall Jarrell
1962: Poems - Alan Dugan
1963: Traveling Through the Dark - William Stafford
1964: Selected Poems - John Crowe Ransom
1965: The Far Field - Theodore Roethke
1966: Buckdancer's Choice: Poems - James Dickey
1967: Nights and Days - James Merrill
1968: The Light Around the Body - Robert Bly
1969: His Toy, His Dream, His Rest - John Berryman
1970: The Complete Poems - Elizabeth Bishop
1971: To See, To Take - Mona Van Duyn
1972: Selected Poems - Howard Moss; Frank O'Hara
1973: Collected Poems, 1951-1971 - A. R. Ammons
1974: The Fall of America: Poems of these States, 1965-1971 - Allen Ginsberg and Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 - Adrienne Rich
1975: Presentation Piece - Marilyn Hacker
1976: Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror - John Ashbery
1977: Collected Poems, 1930-1976 - Richard Eberhart
1978: The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov - Howard Nemerov
1979: Mirabell: Books of Number - James Merrill
1980: Ashes - Philip Levine
1981: The Need to Hold Still - Lisel Mueller
1982: Life Supports: New and Collected Poems - William Bronk
1983: Selected Poems - Galway Kinnell and Country Music: Selected Early Poems - Charles Wright
(not awarded 1984-1990)
1991: What Work Is - Philip Levine
1992: New & Selected Poems - Mary Oliver
1993: Garbage - A.R. Ammons
1994: A Worshipful Company of Fletchers - James Tate
1995: Passing Through: The Later Poems - Stanley Kunitz
1996: Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, Poems 1991-1995 - Hayden Carruth
1997: Effort at Speech: New & Selected Poems - William Meredith
1998: This Time: New and Selected Poems - Gerald Stern
1999: Vice: New & Selected Poems - Ai
2000: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 - Lucille Clifton
2001: Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry - Alan Dugan
2002: In the Next Galaxy - Ruth Stone
2003: The Singing - C.K. Williams
2004: Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003 - Jean Valentine
2005: Migration: New and Selected Poems - W.S. Merwin
2006: Splay Anthem - Nathaniel Mackey
2007: Time and Materials - Robert Hass
2008: Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems - Mark Doty
2009: Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy - Keith Waldrop
2010: Lighthead - Terrance Hayes
2011: Head Off & Split - Nikky Finney
2012: Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations - David Ferry
2013: Incarnadine - Mary Szybist
2014: Faithful and Virtuous Night - Louise Glück
2015: Voyage of the Sable Venus - Robin Coste Lewis
2016: The Performance of Becoming Human - Daniel Borzutzky
2017: Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 - Frank Bidart
2018: Indecency - Justin Phillip Reed
2019: Sight Lines - Arthur Sze
2020: DMZ Colony - Don Mee Choi
2021: Floaters - Martin Espada
2022: Punks: New & Selected Poems - John Keene
2023: from unincorporated territory [amot] - Craig Santos Perez
2024: Something about Living - Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
2025: The Intentions of Thunder - Patricia Smith
I lack confidence when reading poetry, so a stretch in that department is not a good thing for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised at how many fiction award winners I've read, although not many rated highly with me. ;-( I also have several from the early years of the award on my TBR list.
I don't pretend to understand all the poems - but it's nice to try.
DeleteAs for the fiction winners, any list is a mixed bag. I enjoy having somewhere definite to begin, though. Still more reading ahead . . . .