The National Book Foundation has announced these five books of poetry as finalists for the 2005 National Book Awards, which recognizes the best written by Americans in fiction, nonfiction, poetry & young people's literature. The award winners will be announced on November 16, 2005 -- here are links for poetry lovers who want to read all five and choose their own favorite.
1. Where Shall I Wander: New Poems by John Ashbery
(Ecco Press, 2005) John Ashbery is one of the grand masters of contemporary American poetry, the best known poet of the New York School, respected for his “originality, impressionistic elegance, & dark themes of death & terror,” but often thought of as difficult, obscure, a linguistic jokester or hoaxster. Meghan O’Rourke, Slate’s culture editor, says “The best thing to do... is not to try to understand the poems but to try to take pleasure from their arrangement, the way you listen to music.”
2. Star Dust, poems by Frank Bidart
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005) Frank Bidart is a native of Bakersfield, CA who went to Harvard & became a professor of English at Wellesley. His work is unique, dark & musical & contemplative all at once. His Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books, 2002) was the only chapbook to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The National Book Award judges cited Star Dust for conveying its readers into “the art and hell of creative imagination,” what Bidart calls “making... a species of the will to power.”3. Habitat: New And Selected Poems, 1965-2005, by Brendan Galvin
(Louisiana State University Press, 2005) Born in Massachusetts, Brendan Galvin began his academic career studying the natural sciences, then did graduate degrees in literature before becoming professor of English at Central Connecticut State University from 1969 to 1997. His concern with the natural world permeates his 14 volumes of poems, and his publisher describes him as “a master craftsman who seamlessly combines vision and contemplation... among the most powerful naturalist poets today.”4. Migration: New & Selected Poems by W.S. Merwin
(Copper Canyon Press, 2005) This book has been hailed as the definitive collection from “one of the great poets of our age,” a “landmark event in the literary world,” “a distillation of the best poems from a profound body of work, and including a selection of new poems.” It’s a necessary volume for the shelf of any lover of modern American poetry. (For more information about W.S. Merwin & links to read more of his books, see our Merwin reference page.)5. The Moment’s Equation, by Vern Rutsala
(Ashland Poetry Press, 2004) Vern Rutsala was born in Idaho & has lived most of his life in Oregon, where he is a professor of English at Lewis & Clark College. He writes a quintessentially American poetry founded in the small things of daily life. Marvin Bell has said of his work, “Singular as his poems may be, one never doubts that the author is one of us. In his methods, he has never abandoned the idea of a poetry accessible to a great audience.”