Read More Poetry...it helps your word power and imagination!

1	1	Swan by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)	10
2	3	Evidence (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)	8
3	6	Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions)	31
4	5	Hard Times Require Furious Dancing by Alice Walker (New World Library)	6
5	4	The Shadow of Sirius (paperback) by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)	62
6	10	The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (paperback) by Billy Collins (Random House)	185
7	12	Red Bird (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)	86
8	--	Anterooms: New Poems and Translations by Richard Wilbur (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)	2
9	7	New and Selected Poems: Volume Two (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)	185
10	9	Phantom Noise by Brian Turner (Alice James Books)	7
11	14	Ballistics (paperback) by Billy Collins (Random House)	40
12	17	The Continual Conditional (paperback) by Charles Bukowski (Ecco)	5
13	26	Bicycles: Love Poems (paperback) by Nikki Giovanni (Harper Perennial)	39
14	13	The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 (paperback) by Charles Bukowski (Ecco)	99
15	--	The Voluptuary by Paulann Petersen (Lost Horse Press)	1
16	11	Thirst (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)	165
17	15	The Cloud Corporation by Timothy Donnelly (Wave Books)	7
18	16	A Village Life (paperback) by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)	8
19	--	Ignatz by Monica Youn (Four Way)	1
20	--	River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007 by David Whyte (Many Rivers Press)	7
21	18	Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath (Harper Perennial)	193
22	30	The Best of It by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)	36
23	--	The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass (Ecco)	27
24	--	Stories That Listen by Priscilla Becker (Four Way)	1
25	--	One With Others by C. D. Wright (Copper Canyon Press)	1
25	8	Here, Bullet by Brian Turner (Alice James Books)	128
26	--	Newspaper Blackout by Austin Kleon (Harper Perennial)	27
26	28	Leavings by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint)	58
26	23	Migration: New & Selected Poems (paperback) by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)	35
27	--	Walking Papers by Thomas P. Lynch (W. W. Norton & Company)	2
28	--	News of the World by Philip Levine (Knopf)	21
28	--	Redefining Beauty by Karla K. Morton (Dos Gatos Press)	2
29	--	Dialect of a Skirt By Erica Miriam Fabri (Hanging Loose Press)	2
30	27	Versed (paperback) by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan)	21

This is a list of the best sellers in poetry from Oct 31, 2010 to November 6, 2010... I have read a couple of them already, and they are very good...and I didn't even know this list existed until just a little bit ago...guess I could have guessed, though. 

i got the list from The Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/bestsellers.Contemporary.html

Being a poet myself, I should be interested in what new and good, though I do keep reading the old poets, Keats, Eliot, Marlowe, Byron, Ginsberg and assorted Beat poets, Whitman, and others.

I love haiku, too, and it has had a real outpouring in English in the last 50 years.

I think as a poet it is fun and helpful to find styles from other cultures and try to adapt them to English language, shakes things up!

The Villanelle, The Tanka, The Ghazal, The Rondo...to name a few.

Phillip Levine, Robert Hass, W.S. Merwin, Charles Bukowski(RIP), Sylvia Plath(RIP), and Wendell Berry are the poets I have read most recently of the above authors, and their newest works. Great Stuff!!!

Ok, I will leave you with a short poem of mine: The Edge of The Page.                                                                             stand on the edge                                            of a moment while thumbing                       through an old paperback                           somewhere, a bus stop, a bank line,           the DMV, waiting for your light to change,            Green-Spring, Red-Fall, Yellow-Summer:     now drive, dive, arrive at the edge

of The Page, without anger or blame, finding all the lost, light                                  notions of hand,                                        lips not moving, old dog eared time             popping everywhere: lost your place,               but found your faithful spot standing              right on top                                               of the wrong space, edging towards                  the Peaceful Flames, the Candles Of The Disappeared, Songs of the Dead,                     standing on their heads for you, for us all,   and the page folds, and

swallows its own edge, until there is                 no more page, no more book, your thumbs and all fingers become orphans to your need to put words next to words, and              the Edge scoots closer towards                   Reality, as the birds take to the light air       and bring you over to the far shore:                 the house of blessings                                     the hearth where you warm your                    tear-soaked body wet from the rain                  falling over                                               the edge of                                               the world                                                         crying its                                                        words like                                                 true Water                                                          everywhere, everywhere.

Hope you enjoy, and have a great day everyone!!!!    Bye for now.