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It's been a while since I've had the pleasure — or the time — to write for the Powell's blog, so I thought I'd dip my toe into something I really love: a roundup of a few of the best poetry books I've read in the last year. This list, of course, is by no means exhaustive, and I'm sure that every reader will come up with a whole slew of different titles. If you know a book or an author I missed, by all means, let me know — I'll be eternally grateful.

Okay, here we go...

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The first book on my list came out at the end of last year and immediately stole my heart. You may know it already, but if you don't, you should definitely, by hook or by crook, pick it up. It is Patti Smith's Woolgathering (New Directions), a slim little volume that flawlessly weaves her melodic, hypnotic voice into a mesmerizing memoir.

Originally published as one of the legendary Hanuman Books (a series of tiny little books, mostly written by Beats and their hangers-on, that was inexpensively published ...

National Poetry Month should be a festival, a time to rival Mardi Gras in the imaginations of the American people. Poems should be read on the radio daily — and not just by Garrison Keillor — be declaimed in bars and from street corners, and every time one connects to the Internet, one should be offered the arresting opportunity to engage with the muse.

But how to arrive at such an exalted state? In the words of Dana Gioia's famous book of criticism, Can Poetry Matter in our harried, twittering, dog-eared age?

I stand with my colleague Jae, who blogged on poetry earlier this month, on this issue. Poetry can matter, and it can come to play an important and irreplaceable role in our lives. The crux of the problem is to find the book, the author, even the poem that serves as a "good entryway" (in Jae's words) to the world of poetry. It is in that light that I offer up a few of my favorite books of poems of all time.

The poetry section of a bookstore can present potential challenges for any reader. More often than not, poetry books are precociously slim, slipping past first glance; it's far easier to quickly name 10 famous living novelists than 10 famous living poets; and even when you know exactly what you're looking for, small print runs may have rendered the book unavailable. Despite these occasional pitfalls, people who persist in the hunt tend to become lifelong devotees. I don't know what provokes such dogged interest in one person and not another, but I'm convinced that finding a good entryway (even if it's not the front door) is essential. One arresting poet can point the way to at least two others, owing to influence, peer, or predecessor, ad infinitum. In honor of National Poetry Month here are three poets I love, each a potential portal, each a thread end to pick up and map some way through a labyrinthine and manifold art.

Alphabet by Inger Christensen

My engagement with Danish poet Inger Christensen's work was pretty limited prior to her death last year — I liked the few poems I'd read and had the recurrent recognition I'd do well to read more. Then I encountered her 1981 work Alphabet, comprised of 14 sections, each one corresponding to the first 14 letters of the alphabet and ending pointedly on n (as in number n). Christensen structured it further by determining the length of each section according to the Fibonacci sequence, a pattern in which the next number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers (this occurs widely in nature, such as the arrangement of pine cones, sunflower heads). Under such constraints, Alphabet risks losing its lyricism, but it never does. Instead, what unfolds is an exquisite symmetry of idea and content, by way of its surprising, tactile, and ranging language and a luminously specific imagery ("cicadas exist; chicory, chromium, / citrus trees; cicadas exist; / cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum"). Beautifully realized in Suzanne Nied's award-winning translation, Alphabet is an expansive but precise vision of the accreting, refracting world. (If you like Inger Christensen, you might enjoy poets such as Cole Swensen, C. D. Wright, or Susan Howe.)

Well, it's that time of year again. Let's see if I can recommend a few books to make your shopping easier...

First of all, let me bring to your attention Margo Berdeshevsky's haunting and lyrical collection of short stories, Beautiful Soon Enough. This is a strange and wonderful book. It shares the stories of 23 women as they navigate the shores and shoals of their lives, their triumphs and failures. It whispers, really; there's nothing clarion about Beautiful Soon Enough. It's elegant and understated, richly textured and deeply hypnotic. It's no surprise, really, that it won FC2's American Book Review/Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize.

Really, I should let this book, which brushes close to the beauty of poetry, speak for itself. Just a taste now, pulled at random from the text:

What she sees at once is the hump. The very old woman. Then a woman with a cascade of hair, her face buried in her reddened hands. Then, again, the older one. Who is methodically shredding her newspaper whose huge headline is mostly visible. Russia's Day of Knowledge. We are a country in the dark.
Night.
Night.
Night.

April. National Poetry Month. And, we're howling here at Powell's. If you haven't had a look at our poetry writing contest to mark this special month of celebration and effusion, please do so.

Now, onto the books...

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I have a real thing for Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Publisher of Howl, author of A Coney Island of the Mind (for more on that stellar classic, see below), founder of City Lights Publishers and the legendary City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, and defender of civil and human rights both at home and internationally, Ferlinghetti is an honest to God American original. I first read him while in my early 20s, and he changed my life. Poetry that was both ecstatically visionary and eminently readable, that was profoundly political and profoundly humane — he had me in his hand from the word "go."

And, now I'm in possession of a copy of Poetry as Insurgent Art, a tiny book that contains 90 pages of short thoughts on the role of poets and poetry in society, followed by the longer texts of his rightly famous (or infamous) "Populist Manifestos" I and II.

Ferlinghetti's maxims on poetry and the role of the poet are brief and to the point:

"Be a wolf in the sheepfold of silence."

"If you have to teach poetry, strike your blackboard with the chalk of light."

They're also intensely lyrical, politically incendiary, and they continually champion both the individual and collective imagination, as one would expect from this maverick maven of the written word.

Black Widow Press is a fairly new arrival on the independent publishing scene, and their commitment to quality material that other publishers won't go near really makes them stand out. The quality of their books is second to none. The following interview with Joe Phillips, Black Widow's publisher, took place in early February 2008.

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Powell's Chris Faatz: Black Widow Press is a fascinating venture, with its mix of classic surrealist texts and writings by exciting contemporary poets who dwell on the literary edge. How did you come by your interest in such material? What's the genesis of Black Widow itself?

Joe Phillips: As a bookseller of some 20 years, I found there were authors and titles I could talk to customers about but could not actually stock in the store as they were either out of print, had become expensive collector's items, were bad translations of good titles, or were just plain hard to come by. Over the years, frustration mounted, and I started to think and read about publishing. Two and a half years ago I took the plunge. I contacted poet Lee Harwood in the UK about his Tristan Tzara translation, a book which I had always admired but was unable to stock in the store as his 1970s paperback had become a $60 to $75 collector's item. Lee was gracious, willing to take a chance on us, as were the French rights holders, and about a year later our first book was out.

Mary Ann Caws, one of the world's leading authorities on and translators of both the Dadaists and Surrealists, had authored a number of wonderful anthologies that had gone out of print over the years, and I had been eyeing them, especially her anthology of André Breton's writings and her translation of Tzara's epic poem, "Approximate Man." With Mary Ann's help and friendship, we were able to put out two more quality titles (in revised editions), and I think that was the turning point where we laid down the foundation that we were able to build upon and are still building upon.

Dada/Surrealism has always been an extreme interest of mine. These two movements created/convulsed into being so much of what we consider today to be modern: art, typography, poetry, film — the list goes on. I think it is necessary to have these texts available, in good translations and at accessible price points: that is what Black Widow Press is trying to do with its Translation Series. Some of the books in this series are titles we have brought back to life in revised or augmented editions (Chanson Dada, Last Love Poems of Paul Éluard) and others are new altogether (Our Capital of Pain by Éluard, the Desnos anthology, our upcoming Joyce Mansour anthology).

I am hoping some of the "bigger name" anthologies will help generate interest and money so I can keep putting out some of the lesser-known but often equally fascinating poets of the 20th century. I have a list I have created over the years of authors, titles, and particular poems that I would like to see in print. For the Modern Poetry Series it is the authors who I think continue to push language, thought, images with the same type of forcefulness and experimentation that was born out of these earlier movements: poets who generate excitement, or a unique view, or a feeling or emotion within that made me glad I read the book.

Poetry is, of course, very subjective and personal, so how it affects me may not be the same for everyone: my choices may only appeal to a small group. A lot of what I'm attracted to is out on the "literary edge," as you put it, but I think that is where some of the best poetry is currently being written, as it has been in the past.

Faatz: So far the bulk of what you've published comes out of the French surrealist tradition. You've brought out works by Éluard, Breton, and Tzara. By far the most grand undertaking was the publication of a monster collection of the work of Robert Desnos. I understand he had a fascinating life, both as a writer and as a person. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Phillips: André Breton, in his first Manifesto of Surrealism, stated that "Desnos, more than any of us, got closest to the Surrealistic truth." Besides being one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, Desnos was one of the
leading theorists and experimenters of the group. His "automatic writing," often done while in induced trance-like states; his radical experimentation with language, wordplay, and puns (see Martin Sorrell's translations within our anthology for examples); his general spirit and enthusiasm for what he was doing; and his willingness to push himself toward radical change and to go within himself for his writings really make him someone worth reading and studying.

The literary community suffered a great loss in late December with the death of Alexander "Sandy" Taylor, poet, publisher, and fierce proponent of the written word in the service of humanity. Sandy, co-founder of Curbstone Press, one of the nation's leading independent publishers, was a gifted visionary, a warm and unassuming man who dedicated his life to the written word.

As co-publisher at Curbstone, Sandy brought to the attention of North American readers the likes of Roque Dalton, Leonel Rugama, Daisy Zamora, Ernesto Cardenal, and other great poets and novelists of Central and South America. He discovered the gifted U.S. poets Luis Rodriguez and Martin Espada, and went on to pioneer the publishing of Vietnamese literature in this country — a veritable conversation between two once-warring cultures.

Sandy was a great poet, too, although that was a role that he remained very quiet about. He was published throughout Europe, and his last book in this country, Dreaming at the Gates of Fury, was published by Azul Editions, a New England-based publisher of politically conscious literature.

Sandy is survived by his partner and ...