32 Plus 5 (or maybe 6 or 7 or...)

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the 32 Poems blog has been featuring the five favorite poetry books of a given poet, as listed by that poet. Each day of the month features a different poet's list. I've been finding these blog entries useful in extending my already massive to-read list.

I also began to wonder what 5 books of poetry would be on my list of favorites (not that anybody has ever asked me, but as we all know, I love a list), so I have compiled today's favorite 5. I say "today's" because the list is ever-evolving and so dependent on my mindset at the time of compilation.

Anyway, here it is:

Jessica's Five Favorite Books of Poetry (as of April 21, 2011), in no particular order:

1. Cole Swensen's The Book of a Hundred Hands: Poems
2. W. B. Keckler's Sanskrit of the Body
3. Stefi Weisburd's The Wind-up Gods
4. Corinne Lee's PYX
5. Chad Sweeney's Parable of Hide and Seek (and just about everything else I've read by Chad Sweeney)
6. Anne Michaels's The Weight of Oranges/Miner's Pond
7. Almost anything by Charles Wright, Anne Carson, and Jack Gilbert

Okay, it's not that I can't count to 5, it's that I can't stop listing great poetry. But I am stopping now. These titles came off the top of my head without even consulting my bookshelves. If I did that, I'm sure I'd have more more more. And I only added #7 because these are my tried-and-true favorite poets that I couldn't NOT include, but I really wanted to give the names of some poets you might not have heard of, so that's #1-6.

Please feel free to list your favorite 5 or so in the comments section below. I'd love to learn the names of some poets I don't already know.

Happy Poetry Month.