Meme: 20 Poetry Books

I don’t usually meme, but I like this one, from Eduardo Corral’s blog:

What are 20 poetry books (if there are twenty) that made you fall in love with poetry, the books that made you think: I want to do this, I need to do this. What are the books that kept you going? Don’t put down the books that you think you’re “supposed” to like, but list the core ones, the ones that opened all of this up for you.

[But what if you have come into poetry or become inspired to write poetry by reading other genres, hearing and viewing other media? Isn't this possible, to find poetry in places other than poetry books? And isn't it possible not to find poetry in books of poetry?]

That said, this is my list (in no particular order):

1. Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
2. Jessica Hagedorn, Dangerous Music.
3. Myung Mi Kim, Under Flag.
4. Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers.
5. Catalina Cariaga, Cultural Evidence.
6. Federico García Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York.
7. Jimmy Santiago Baca, Martín & Meditations on the South Valley.
8. Truong Tran, Dust and Conscience.
9. Jaime Jacinto, Heaven is Just Another Country.
10. Frances Chung, Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple.
11. Harryette Mullen, Recyclopedia.
12. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera.
13. Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller.
14. Anne Waldman, Fast Speaking Woman.
15. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee.
16. Oliver de la Paz, Names Above Houses.
17. Allen Ginsberg, Howl.
18. Bay Area Pilipino American Writers (eds.), Without Names.
19. Merlinda Bobis, Cantata of the Woman Warrior Daragang Magayon.
20. Walter Lew (ed.), Premonitions.

Additional thoughts:

• R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s is considered a novel, which is comprised of vignettes and many poems, and which has strongly informed my code switching and use of Catholic prayer.
• Eduardo Galeano is not considered a poet, though his numerous volumes of genre blurring work is to me very much poetry. Also, his reading and interview in the Lannan video series made me simply giddy.
• Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory For Forgetfulness is an extended meditation on exile, which to me reads as one very long prose poem.
• Trinh Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other is not poetry, although her discussions of women of color artists, and post-colonialism have been very important to my poetics.
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art is really quite lovely. I realize this sounds demeaning, but I mean this sincerely. There are so many bits of taken for granted common sense and illumination in this collection, stuff I need to remember when stupid people and the Poetic Industrial Complex drag me down.