Why aren't we all reading poetry again?

It is not a resolution, as it's been building over the last year, and I'm now confident it will continue. I'm really loving poetry right now. Not in a read-a-bit/write-some-garbage kind of way, but in a why-did-I-ever-stop-reading-this-and-who-do-I-read-next kind of way. There's much to discover.

To help me with this, I received a fantastic Christmas gift: my partner gave me his own version of a poetry starter kit, with a number of books of trustworthy contemporary poets to kick off the new year. I thought I'd list them all here with links, as we've listed great poetry books on SotB before. It's always worth spreading the word!

In no particular order:

New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions)

Martin Espada's A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen (Norton)

Maureen N. McLane's Same Life (FSG)

Denise Levertov's Making Peace (New Directions)

Audre Lorde's Coal (Norton)

Robert Hass's Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Philip Levine's Breath (Knopf)

Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things (Bulfinch)

Federico Garcia Lorca's Ode to Walt Whitman & Other Poems (City Lights)

Grace Paley's Fidelity (FSG)

As I start to read through this incredible collection of poetry books, I can look to Jeff Gordinier's advice. You'll recall that he's been in touch with us here at SotB before. In fact, he's the one that provided a list of contemporary poetry books referenced earlier in this post. Well he has a relatively new post over at the Poetry Foundation blog giving us all permission to flip through poetry books. It's liberating. Thanks, Jeff!

And happy new year!