A well-thumbed edition of Contemporary American Poetry bought when I was fourteen is my go-to book for poems I’ve loved a long time. The blue inked stars festooning the poem-title list show that I’m glad I know poems for different reasons: Donald Justice’s “The Missing Person” for the questions it raises about identity and its exploration of a deep loneliness; Frank O’Hara’s “Why I Am Not A Painter” for its humor and sparkling images and engagement with the art world; Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” for its sonorous ferocity; all Elizabeth Bishop for her painterly details and unsparing, strange eye. And the list I’d make today reaches back to those reasons and throws in a new one: hope.
* Stephen Dunn—“The Stairway”
* Katrina Vandenberg—“Poem on Tim’s 35th Birthday”
* Frank O’Hara—“A Step Away From Them”
* Robert Haas—“Meditation at Lagunitas”
* Audre Lord—“For Each of You”
* Muriel Rukeyser—“Ballad of Orange and Grape”