5 Books Every Poet Should Have

by David Waite

As with all literature, poetry has the task of both amazing the reader through its topics and impressing with its ingenuity of form or style. As poets go on to write their own material a body of work that continually inspires or challenges them becomes a valuable resource. These books can then become touchstones that provide new insights with each viewing and a helpful text for new writers to experience. While each writer is different, the following may be informative collections for the new or experienced poet.

1. “Selected Poems” by Gwendolyn Brooks. The poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks dives into to life to portray scenes of conflict, naivety, frailty and loss, all while keeping a shade of humor under the surface. In fact, the narrators that paint the scenes in Brooks’s poems turn out to be just as interesting as the pictures themselves. The light rhyme and alliteration the author uses highlight the tone her scenes as Brooks looks directly at race, sex and American culture. Her work then combines to form a thoughtful and clear-eyed view of the twentieth century. So while poems like “We Real Cool” and “a song in the front yard” may not take place in contemporary America, every emotion is understandable and the themes are both introspective and magical.

2. “Old and New Poems” by Donald Hall. “Old and New Poems” displays Hall’s remarkably wide variety of piercing poems, work that illustrates everyday events while at the same time portrays a deep sense of history. While a poem may be talking about relatives, horses or a train engine, the emotive voice with which the speaker describes them shows the reader why it is significant. The journey many of the poems take is a rough one, filled with hurt, memory and old joy, which is exactly why they become such memorable moments. All the while the stories are conveyed with varied and complex structures that frame the beautifully realized work.

3. “Thomas and Beulah” by Rita Dove. While having the “Selected” edition of a poet’s catalogue is nice, sometimes it is better to have a single book of poems to observe the method a writer will use to create a meaningful order. “Thomas and Beulah” uses an innovative style of dividing up poems into two distinct narrative sections, named “Mandolin” and “Canary in Bloom.” These titles serve as summations of the main characters as well as narrative ties between them as the two protagonists become linked through music. While each section portrays its own events and sympathies, one part also acts to complement the other’s events. And although many books of poetry have a common narrator, very few feature original characters that a reader follows like this one does. The individual poems also stand on their own as narratives but inevitably add up to become a much greater accomplishment.

4. “All of Us” by Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver lived to complete four collections of poetry which were then brought together as “All of Us.” In each book of poems, readers can see new and innovative ways of creating groups of poems that have a cohesion and tell a story through their order, transitioning from one emotion to the next to create a poetic arc. Inside that arc are sparse, interrogative poems about addiction and pain that reach beyond the unfortunate to highlight the spectacular. While each book is fascinating, the last book in the collection, “A New Path to the Waterfall” is a more chronological trip through a period in the poet’s life that is defined by a cancer diagnosis. The shock and beauty of the last poems is thoroughly surprising and poised, as are all the small moments the author walks through.

5. “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman expressed a new type of freedom and expression in “Leaves of Grass” by using long lines and expanding thoughts, creating a unique and effective style. Whitman’s lines were statements not contained by conventional meter but regulated by the author’s inherent breath and enthusiasm. His vision and scope matched this style, producing extended studies of America, Manhattan, war, love, death, and, maybe mostly famously, himself. As Whitman wrote more he added to the original “Leaves of Grass” to create a single, multi-faceted experience. Nature and history float through the collection as Whitman tries to see everything that he can, be curious about the world, and ultimately be true to his own vision, even if that picture might be controversial or self-indulgent. This choice ultimately led him to create a new and beautiful reality that could have only come from his voice.

David is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program from Goddard College. His work has appeared in or will soon appear in Bellowing Ark, Small Brushes, Children, Churches and Daddies, and Love's Chance Magazine.