08 January 2007

PEGASUS BOOKS DOWNTOWN'S
BEST-SELLING POETRY BOOKS OF 2006
(DON'T BLAME ME; BLAME YOU.)
  1. Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky (Tupelo)

  2. The Errant Thread by Elline Lipkin (Kore)

  3. The Pocket Rumi Reader edited by Kabir Helminski (Shambhala)

  4. I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone by Anna Moschovakis (Turtle Point)

  5. Actual Air by David Berman (Open City)
    Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen (Ecco)

  6. At Blackwater Pond by Mary Oliver (Beacon)
    lucky wreck by Ada Limón (Autumn House)
    New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver (Beacon)
    Your Time Has Come by Joshua Beckman (Wave)

  7. Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon)

  8. Shake by Joshua Beckman (Wave)

  9. Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg (City Lights)
    Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda (Penguin)

  10. Bay Poetics edited by Stephanie Young (Faux)
    case sensitive by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta)
    Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (Vintage)
    Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins (Random House)
    That We Come to a Consensus by Noah Eli Gordon & Sara Veglahn (Ugly Duckling)
    The Totality for Kids by Joshua Clover (University of California)
    Walter B.'s Extraordinary Cousin Arrives for a Visit & Other Tales by Sabrina Orah Mark (Woodland Editions)

  11. Poems of Days Past by Nakahara Chûya (American Book Company)
    Rumi: The Book of Love by Coleman Barks (Harper San Francisco)
    Selected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco)

  12. The Gift by Hafiz (Penguin)
    Legitimate Dangers edited by Michael Dumanis & Cate Marvin (Sarabande)
    The Letters of James Schuyler to Frank O'Hara (Turtle Point)
    The Men: A Lyric Book by Lisa Robertson (BookThug)
    Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver (Beacon)
    Thirst by Mary Oliver (Beacon)
    The Weather by Lisa Robertson (New Star)

  13. The Anger Scale by Katie Degentesh (Combo)
    Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse by Anne Boyer (Effing)
    At All by Norma Cole (Hooke)
    Cousins by Alli Warren (Lame House)
    Cures Include Travel by Susan Rich (White Pine)
    Letters to Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth (Wave)
    Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara (City Lights)
    Necessary Stranger by Graham Foust (Flood)
    Poeta en San Francisco by Barbara Jane Reyes (Tinfish)
    The Room Where I Was Born by Brian Teare (University of Wisconsin)
    Things of Each Possible Relation Hashing Against One Another by Juliana Spahr (Palm)

  14. As in Every Deafness by Graham Foust (Flood)
    The Babies by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia)
    Blue Iris by Mary Oliver (Beacon)
    A Complex Bravery by Robert Lipton (Marick)
    Concordance by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge & Kiki Smith (Kelsey Street)
    F2F by Janet Holmes (University of Notre Dame)
    Jazz Poems edited by Kevin Young (Everyman's Library)
    Osip Mandelstam: New Translations edited by Ilya Bernstein (Ugly Duckling)
    Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form by Matthea Harvey (Alice James)
    Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems by Noelle Kocot (Wave)
    Shadow Evidence Intelligence by Kristin Prevallet (Factory School)

Regrettably, labor shortages here at EYEBALL HATRED prevent us from listing further or linking to titles, authors, or presses. Thanks to all. We wonder how we made it this far.

7 RIDERS:

At 06 January, 2007 21:21, Blogger François Luong said...

Hum ... Yeah, when you mention it, I might get that Nakahara Chuya too.

 
At 08 January, 2007 09:01, Blogger Unknown said...

Hey Clay - Leah's (from your job) GF here (Poet with a Day Job!) - this is a pretty ho-hum list, but I am so glad to see Frank O'Hara and David Berman in there...Actual Air is one of my favorite books. Also, I used to loathe Mary Oliver, but for every poem of hers that beats the sentimental crap out of me, another, like those from American Primitive, rips my heart out with its talons....gotta love her for that, even if you don't love the Percy The Dog poems...

Anyway, looking forward to Arielle G. on Sunday - since Tillie Olsen died Jan. 1, her family is requesting people gather to read her work on her birthday Jan 14 to commemorate her life - any way we can get AG to read a little something from Tell Me a Riddle to open the reading and honor T.O.? She did live in Oakland...

 
At 08 January, 2007 09:23, Blogger CLAY BANES said...

dear M:

i look forward to seeing you. i know about olsen's passing and the memorial readings that day. something will happen.

as to the list made by the unwashed who walk into a bookstore and actually buy books: i can't agree it's ho-hum. i mean, it's not this.

my secret lover/confidante/friend knows how i feel about the utility of mary oliver.

what would have made this list, had i included literary journals: single issues of no: a journal of the arts, cannibal, hot whiskey, and effing.

my expectations are modest. i can live with it.

 
At 08 January, 2007 12:11, Blogger Unknown said...

I s'pose you are right: three cheers for all those small presses and varied names and styles.

As for Poetry's List: three cheers for Anne Carson? And Emerson's Late Wife is good too. But yikes! It's pretty homogenous!

 
At 08 January, 2007 17:09, Blogger CLAY BANES said...

or another way of putting it: dull.

 
At 09 January, 2007 23:28, Blogger CLAY BANES said...

dear jtj:

that's a confidential piece of business information. i'm not at liberty to say. more than you think. more than we ever sold of bob woodward's last book. fewer than 10.

thirty titles were tied for the no. 15 slot. i like that it's all spread out, not everyone buying the same damn thing. ok, unless the thing is the saturday night live soundtrack. then that would be cool.

i kind of wish bay poetic had come in higher. we sold a lot, but half the town got a complimentary copy — because they're in it. whatever punctuation marks come together to indicate a happy wink, insert there here.

 
At 10 January, 2007 11:09, Blogger Carla said...

rock stars tie for 5th.
i wonder what a fist fight between berman and cohen would be like. wow.

 

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