Book of the Year: Collected Poems by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson (Modern Library). This one is unavoidable. You can’t get around it. You have to go through it. 2007 was a very good year for Auden’s readers. Mendelson’s collection was welcomed with open arms on both sides of the Atlantic. Timed to [...]

  Book of the Year: Not for Specialists: New & Selected Poems by W. D. Snodgrass (BOA Editions). What happened to Snodgrass? After winning the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for his first book, the “confessional school” landmark Heart’s Needle, his career stalled. As William Logan has written, among living poets “none has suffered so peculiar a [...]

    Book of the Year: The Collected Poems (1943-2004) of Richard Wilbur (Harcourt) Runners-Up: Safest by Michael Donaghy (Picador) Who is the greatest living American poet? While Anthony Hecht lived, one could debate the question. Now, the matter is beyond dispute: Wilbur really is our “king of the cats.” What’s more, not since Robert [...]

  Book of the Year: The Collected Poems of Donald Justice (Knopf) Runner-Up: Second Space by Czeslaw Milosz (Ecco). Inner Voices: Selected Poems by Richard Howard (FSG). Granted, this is not a daring choice. Donald Justice was beloved as a poet and teacher by several generations of American poets. Still, we’ll leave it to other [...]

Book of the Year: The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell, edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter (FSG) Runners-Up: The Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, edited by Paul Keegan (FSG); “I Am”: The Selected Poetry of John Clare, edited by Jonathan Bate (FSG) The story of the year was summed up in two words: Robert [...]