Saturday, January 20, 2018

Best Poems of 2017

Ernest J. Berry …… haiku “impressive name”
Blaise Cendrars …… The Formosa: Life
Bernard Eibond …… haiku “frog pond”
Carolyn Hall …… haiku “enough blossoms”
Yvonne Hardenbrook …… haiku “solstice afternoon”
Duriel E. Harris …… Self Portrait at the Millennium
Paul Hoover …… God’s Promises
Gary Hotham …… haiku “fog”
Takuboku Ishikawa …… “That story of an affair”
Byron Jackson …… haiku “everywhere”
Major Jackson …… Narcissus
Ling Ju Jung …… Night Reverie
James Longenbach …… Snow
Nikola Nilic …… haiku “moonlight”
Linda Noel …… Time Frame
H. F. Noyes …… haiku “subway posters”
W. F. Owen …… haiku “in the park”
Ron Padgett …… Album
Ron Padgett …… Alone and Not Alone
Ron Padgett …… The Ems Dispatch
Ron Padgett …… Nunc
Ron Padgett …… Postcards
Ron Padgett …… Tom and Jerry Graduate from High School
Carl Patrick …… haiku “fireflies”
Po Chu-I …… Aboard a Boat, Reading Yuan Ninth’s Poems
Po Chu-I …… Night on the West River
Jeffrey Rabkin …… haiku “after coming in”
Rachel Richardson …… The Horses
David Rollins …… haiku “this long journey”
John Sheirer …… haiku “talking in her sleep”
Doug Sherman …… haiku “long meeting”
Sun Yun Feng …… Riding at Daybreak
Anna Tambour …… haiku “preoccupied”
Rick Tarquinio …… haiku “winter night”
Wang An Shih …… The Plum Tree
Wang Chih-Huan …… Climbing White Stork Tower
Wei Ying-Wu …… Chuchou’s West Stream


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If this is your first visit to Dare I Read, welcome. If you’ve been here a few times you already know about my “Best Poems” lists. Today’s list consists of the poems I read in 2017 and decided I could not leave behind. As I read I keep handy a stack of placemarks. If I read a poem I want to read again, I pop in a placemark. I revisit the poem until it wears out for me, or until I decide I have to keep it. In the latter case I hand copy the poem into a looseleaf notebook.

The haiku comes primarily from anthologies published by Red Moon Press. I worked my way through what I could find in libraries. 


I’ve enjoyed Ron Padgett’s poems as I’ve encountered them here and there. This year I took on his books in chronological order. I was surprised to find that the copies held by the Berkeley Public Library were often checked out. There were even holds queues. For poetry! People waiting in line for poetry! It wasn’t until we caught up with Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson on DVD that I clued in on what was driving the popularity. The movie’s poet protagonist writes poems that are written by Ron Padgett. So there were some new interviews with Padgett based on his contributions to the film, which I also read. Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems also is freshly out. It’s big and thick. I got to it after I read the slim volumes, so I would only have to heft it to read poems I otherwise couldn’t find. In one of the interviews Padgett says when he met Adam Driver, the Paterson actor, Driver told Padgett he’d read the big Collected all the way through. Padgett seems to have been tempted to respond, “You didn’t have to do that.”

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