Year-End Lists

Literary Hub: The 10 Best Poetry Collections of the Decade

[see also 2017]

• Nox
  Anne Carson
• Lighthead
  Terrance Hayes
• Life on Mars
  Tracy K. Smith
• When My Brother Was an Aztec
  Natalie Diaz
• Thrall
  Natasha Trethewey
• Incarnadine
  Mary Szybist
• Citizen

  An American Lyric
  Claudia Rankine
• Voyage of the Sable Venus

  and Other Poems
  Robin Coste Lewis
• Night Sky With Exit Wounds
  Ocean Vuong
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith

Dissenting Opinions

• One With Others
  C.D. Wright
• Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
  Mark Leidner
• Engine Empire
  Cathy Park Hong
• Slow Lightning
  Eduardo C. Corral
• Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals
  Patricia Lockwood
• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
  Ross Gay
• Bright Dead Things
  Ada Limón
• Bestiary
  Donika Kelly
• Good Stock Strange Blood
  Dawn Lundy Martin
• Wild Is the Wind
  Carl Phillips
• Soft Science
  Franny Choi

Honorable Mentions

• The Best of It
  Kay Ryan
• Every Riven Thing
  Christian Wiman
• Space, in Chains
  Laura Kasischke
• Head Off & Split
  Nikky Finney
• Water Puppets
  Quan Barry
• not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them
  Jenny Boully
• Stag's Leap
  Sharon Olds
• Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys
  D.A. Powell
• Bewilderment

  New Poems and Translations
  David Ferry
• My Poems Won't Change the World
  Patrizia Cavalli
• Vow
  Rebecca Hazelton
• Black Aperture
  Matt Rasmussen
• Antidote
  Corey Van Landingham
• Metaphysical Dog
  Frank Bidart
• 3 Sections
  Vijay Seshadri
• White Blight
  Athena Farrokhzad
• Digest
  Gregory Pardlo
• Prelude to Bruise
  Saeed Jones
• Gabriel
  Edward Hirsch
• Faithful and Virtuous Night
  Louise Glück
• How to Be Drawn
  Terrance Hayes
• Wishing for Birds
  Elisabeth Hewer
• Girl-King
  Brittany Cavallaro
• War of the Foxes
  Richard Siken
• Ozone Journal
  Peter Balakian
• I Must Be Living Twice

  New and Selected Poems 1975 – 2014
  Eileen Myles
• House of Lords and Commons
  Ishion Hutchinson
• Look
  Solmaz Sharif
• Olio
  Tyehimba Jess
• The Performance of Becoming Human
  Daniel Borzutzky
• Electric Arches
  Eve L. Ewing
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier
• Good Bones
  Maggie Smith
• Calling a Wolf a Wolf
  Kaveh Akbar
• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart
• So Where Are We?
  Lawrence Joseph
• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
  Terrance Hayes
• The Carrying
  Ada Limón
• Ghost Of
  Diana Khoi Nguyen
• Virgin
  Analicia Sotelo
• Indecency
  Justin Phillip Reed
• Tropic of Squalor
  Mary Karr
• Deaf Republic
  Ilya Kaminsky
• The Tradition
  Jericho Brown
• Unhistorical
  Brittany Cavallaro
• Magical Negro
  Morgan Parker
• Gloss
  Rebecca Hazelton