Best Poetry of 2007: Celebrating Verse with 11 Top Titles

It's National Poetry Month, and you've pulled out your top poetry circulators, from Emily Dickinson to Robert Frost to John Ashbery. While you're at it, don't forget the fresh new choices you have now—the poetry world has never been so rich, so busy, and so diverse. Here is a list of top titles from 2007 that should get everyone reading.

In a recent National Book Critics Circle list of recommended reading from fall 2007, Armantrout's prickly and elusive work figured in the top five with heavy hitters like Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky. These spare poems have a music of their own. (LJ 5/1/07)

So many authors writing about a child's death deliver the raw material, as if that were enough. Bang's beautifully compassed work is instead transformative, turning anguish into genuine poetry. A stunning and heartfelt read; this year's National Book Critics Circle award winner. (LJ 1/08)

Starched eyes. Torch-blur. A luminous bed. Light that bleeds. Such are the pungent images that shape the poems in this collection by South African poet Breytenbach, whose tough, sharp-hued poetry is (dare we say) compulsive reading.

Combining selections from eight previous titles and a generous sampling of new works, this luscious collection offers evocative and sharply observed vignettes that will call readers up short every time. It's not every poet that can describe hot tar being poured and successfully evoke Poussin. (LJ 3/15/07)

A former poet laureate collects "time and materials" over nearly a decade to deliver this grandly meditative work, which won the National Book Award. (LJ 8/07)

Loose, loopy, long-lined, and sometimes decidedly droll, Kirby's poetry reads like the outrageous monolog of a particularly chatty and entertaining friend—but it's much more illuminating. A distinctive look at contemporary life.

So much poetry described as spare is also spare of thought, of image. But O'Brien's brief evocations—"some/ chips of light," "Last year's palms/ burnt to ash"—describe worlds. Be sure to visit them.

Drawing on a libretto he wrote for a folk-opera with composer John Harle, Pickard reimagines the life of famed 18th-century rogue Jamie Allan, a brilliant piper who haunted the English-Scottish border and died a thief in the Durham Lock Up. Enchanting and original; even for people who say they don't read poetry.

Polish poetry isn't just Zbigniew Herbert and Wislawa Szymborska, as evidenced by this compendium of three recent volumes by Rozewicz. Concise yet fluid—the poems simply cascade down the page—and utterly contemporary in tone even while embracing the dark history of the 20th century, this book is a real find for poetry lovers.

In this magisterial work, Swensen melds a discussion of glass, light, and painting into an acute study of the nature of perception. It's a relief to escape the ubiquitous "I" of contemporary poetry and encounter a collection that so deftly takes a larger view. (LJ 9/15/06)

Zucker takes the worn but thorny issue of marriage and turns it into a meditation that's engaging and insightful, funny, scathing, and apt. Her lines sprawl across the page like a "bad wife" sprawling across the bed, where poetry fans will be stuck reading if they dare pick up this book.