Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (TBR and DR)

In keeping with my efforts to keep exploring new poets, here's a list that -- thanks to the passage of time -- contains a whole bunch of venerable poets, a few I've never heard of, several of my favorites, and plenty of relative newcomers I've never read before.

I got a head start on this list when it was a whole lot shorter. How that happened without becoming a formal goal, I'm not quite sure. But my printed-out copy from 2001, sourced from the Harvard Book Store website, no less, goes only back to 1986. Hmmmm. Was Harvard cutting corners? Or did they figure no one wanted to read poetry from, say, 1947? There is some kind of a floating heading on the page that says "Latest Awards," so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. That will make us all feel better.

(Yeesh! The meaning of the words "my printed-out copy from 2001" has just sunk in. How can that be 15 years ago???)

As usual, green means I'm still in search of a copy. Blue means waiting patiently on the TBR shelves.

It's nice to make this official! We all need goals. Even if they take decades to accomplish.

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (website)

2025: New and Selected Poems - Marie Howe
2024: Tripas: Poems - Brandon Som

2023: Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 - Carl Phillips
2022: frank: sonnets - Diane Seuss

2021: Postcolonial Love Poem - Natalie Diaz

2020: The Tradition - Jericho Brown
2019: Be With - Forrest Gander
2018: Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 - Frank Bidart
2017: Olio - Tyehimba Jess 
2016: Ozone Journal - Peter Balakian 
2015: Digest - Gregory Pardlo 
2014: 3 Sections - Vijay Seshadri 
2013: Stag's Leap - Sharon Olds
2012: Life on Mars - Tracy K. Smith 
2011: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems - Kay Ryan 
2010: Versed - Rae Armantrout 
2009: The Shadow of Sirius - W.S. Merwin 
2008: Failure - Philip Schultz and Time and Materials - Robert Hass 
2007: Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey 
2006: Late Wife - Claudia Emerson 
2005: Delights & Shadows - Ted Kooser
2004: Walking to Martha's Vineyard - Franz Wright 
2003: Moy Sand and Gravel - Paul Muldoon
2002: Practical Gods - Carl Dennis
2001: Different Hours - Stephen Dunn
2000: Repair - C.K. Williams
1999: Blizzard of One - Mark Strand
1998: Black Zodiac - Charles Wright 
1997: Alive Together: New and Selected Poems - Lisel Mueller
1996: The Dream of the Unified Field - Jorie Graham
1995: The Simple Truth - Philip Levine
1994: Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems - Yusef Komunyakaa
1993: The Wild Iris - Louise Gluck
1992: Selected Poems - James Tate
1991: Near Changes - Mona Van Duyn 
1990: The World Doesn't End - Charles Simic 
1989: New and Collected Poems - Richard Wilbur
1988: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems - William Meredith
1987: Thomas and Beulah - Rita Dove
1986: The Flying Change - Henry Taylor
1985: Yin - Carolyn Kizer
1984: American Primitive - Mary Oliver
1983: Selected Poems - Galway Kinnell 
1982: The Collected Poems - Sylvia Plath
1981: The Morning of the Poem - James Schuyler 
1980: Selected Poems - Donald Justice 
1979: Now and Then - Robert Penn Warren 
1978: Collected Poems - Howard Nemerov 
1977: Divine Comedies - James Merrill
1976: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror - John Ashbery
1975: Turtle Island - Gary Snyder 
1974: The Dolphin - Robert Lowell 
1973: Up Country - Maxine Kumin 
1972: Collected Poems - James Wright 
1971: The Carrier of Ladders - William S. Merwin 
1970: Untitled Subjects - Richard Howard 
1969: Of Being Numerous - George Oppen 
1968: The Hard Hours - Anthony Hecht 
1967: Live or Die - Anne Sexton
1966: Selected Poems - Richard Eberhart 
1965: 77 Dream Songs - John Berryman 
1964: At The End Of The Open Road - Louis Simpson
1963: Pictures from Brueghel - William Carlos Williams 
1962: Poems - Alan Dugan 
1961: Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades - Phyllis McGinley 
1960: Heart's Needle - W. D. Snodgrass 
1959: Selected Poems 1928-1958 - Stanley Kunitz 
1958: Promises: Poems 1954-1956 - Robert Penn Warren 
1957: Things of This World - by Richard Wilbur 
1956: Poems: North & South--A Cold Spring - Elizabeth Bishop
1955: Collected Poems - Wallace Stevens
1954: The Waking - Theodore Roethke 
1953: Collected Poems 1917-1952 - Archibald MacLeish 
1952: Collected Poems - Marianne Moore 
1951: Complete Poems - Carl Sandburg 
1950: Annie Allen - Gwendolyn Brooks
1949: Terror and Decorum - Peter Viereck 
1948: The Age of Anxiety - W. H. Auden 
1947: Lord Weary's Castle - Robert Lowell 
1946: no award
1945: V-Letter and Other Poems - Karl Shapiro 
1944: Western Star - Stephen Vincent Benet
1943: A Witness Tree - Robert Frost
1942: The Dust Which Is God - William Rose Benet 
1941: Sunderland Capture - Leonard Bacon 
1940: Collected Poems - Mark Van Doren 
1939: Selected Poems - John Gould Fletcher 
1938: Cold Morning Sky - Marya Zaturenska
1937: A Further Range - Robert Frost
1936: Strange Holiness - Robert P. Tristram Coffin 
1935: Bright Ambush - Audrey Wurdemann 
1934: Collected Verse - Robert Hillyer 
1933: Conquistador - Archibald Macleish
1932: The Flowering Stone - George Dillon 
1931: Collected Poems - Robert Frost
1930: Selected Poems - Conrad Aiken
1929: John Brown's Body - Stephen Vincent Benet 
1928: Tristram - Edwin Arlington Robinson 
1927: Fiddler's Farewell - Leonora Speyer
1926: What's O'Clock - Amy Lowell 
1925: The Man Who Died Twice - Edwin Arlington Robinson
1924: New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes - Robert Frost
1923: The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany - Edna St. Vincent Millay 
1922: Collected Poems - Edwin Arlington Robinson
1920 and 1921: no award
1919: Corn Huskers - Carl Sandburg and Old Road to Paradise - Margaret Widdemer
1918: Love Songs - Sara Teasdale