Year-End Lists

David Orr: Best Poetry of 2018, as published by The New York Times

[see also 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015]

• Human Hours
  Catherine Barnett
• The Popol Vuh
  Michael Bazzett (translator)
• Years, Months, and Days
  Amanda Jernigan
• Dark Woods
  Richard Sanger
• Wade in the Water
  Tracy K. Smith
• A Memory of the Future
  Elizabeth Spires
• Like
  A.E. Stallings
• Transaction Histories
  Donna Stonecipher
• Blood Labors
  Daniel Tobin
• Hey, Marfa
  Jeffrey Yang

Publishers Weekly: 5 Best Poetry Books of 2018

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

• Be With
  Forrest Gander
• The Carrying
  Ada Limón
• Moon

  Letters, Maps, Poems
  Jennifer S. Cheng
• Real Life

  An Installation
  Julie Carr
• Lo terciario
  Raquel Salas Rivera

Dan Chiasson: The Poetry I Was Grateful For in 2018, as published by The New Yorker

[see also 2017 • 2016 • 2015]

• Eye Level
  Jenny Xie
• The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

  1940-1956
  Sylvia Plath
• feeld
  Jos Charles
• Be With
  Forrest Gander
• Museum of the Americas
  J. Michael Martinez
• The Final Voicemails
  Max Ritvo
• Letters from Max

  A Book of Friendship
  Sarah Ruhl & Max Ritvo
• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
  Terrance Hayes
• Like
  A.E. Stallings
• Drafts, Fragments, and Poems

  The Complete Poetry
  Joan Murray

Elizabeth Lund: 5 Best Poetry Collections of 2018, as published by The Washington Post

[see also 2017 • 2016 • 2015]

• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
  Terrance Hayes
• The Carrying
  Ada Limón
• New Poets of Native Nations
  Heid E. Erdrich
• So Far So Good
  Ursula K. Le Guin
• Wade in the Water
  Tracy K. Smith

National Book Award: Poetry 2018

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2013]

Winner

• Indecency
  Justin Phillip Reed

Finalists

• Wobble
  Rae Armantrout
• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
  Terrance Hayes
• Ghost Of
  Diana Khoi Nguyen
• Eye Level
  Jenny Xie

Longlist

• feeld
  Jos Charles
• Be With
  Forrest Gander
• Museum of the Americas
  J. Michael Martinez
• Lo terciario
  Raquel Salas Rivera
• Monument

  Poems New and Selected
  Natasha Trethewey

Joseph Salvatore: Best 25 Poetry Books of 2017, as published by The Brooklyn Rail

1. Advances in Embroidery

   Poems, with Translations from Mahmoud Darwish
   Ahmad Al-Ashqar
2. Calling a Wolf a Wolf
   Kaveh Akbar
3. Bye-Bye Land
   Christian Barter
4. Before the Drought
   Margo Berdeshevsky
5. Half-Light

   Collected Poems 1965-2016
   Frank Bidart
6. Let’s Not Live on Earth
   Sarah Blake
7. Second Nature
   Patricia Carlin
8. Barbie Chang
   Victoria Chang
9. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
   Chen Chen
10. bone
    Yrsa Daley-Ward
11. Trophic Cascade
    Camille T. Dungy
12. The January Children
    Safia Elhillo
13. Gates & Fields
    Jennifer Firestone
14. Sky Country
    Christine Kitano
15. I Am Flying into Myself

    Selected Poems, 1960-2014
    Bill Knott
16. These Days Of Candy
    Manuel Paul Lopez
17. In the Language of My Captor
    Shane McCrae
18. Devotions

    The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
    Mary Oliver
19. There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
    Morgan Parker
20. On Imagination
    Mary Ruefle
21. Lessons on Expulsion
    Erika L. Sánchez
22. Don’t Call Us Dead
    Danez Smith
23. The Trembling Answers
    Craig Morgan Teicher
24. Afterland
    Mai Der Vang
25. Where the Time Goes
    Gale Renee Walden

Literary Hub: Favorite Poetry Collections of 2017, as selected by 50 poets and writers

[see also 2010s]

• MyOTHER TONGUE
  Rosa Alcalá
• Across the Vapour Gulf
  Will Alexander
• Adrenalin
  Ghayath Almadhoun
• The Codex Mojaodicus
  Steven Alvarez
• John Ashbery

  Collected Poems 1991-2000
  John Ashbery
• Field Theories
  Samiya Bashir
• My Lai
  Carmen Berenguer
• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart
• Of Mongrelitude
  Julian Talamantez Brolaski
• You Envelop Me
  Laynie Browne
• Advice from the Lights
  Stephen Burt
• Rocket Fantastic
  Gabrielle Calvocoressi
• Mock Trough Rasping Crow
  Billy Cancel
• Deuda & Literatura
  Omar Chauvié
• recombinant
  Ching-In Chen
• Death by Sex Machine
  Franny Choi
• Perverse, All Monstrous
  Cody-Rose Clevidence
• Tantrum
  Stella Corso
• The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky
  Fay Zwicky
• Le Jardin de M.
  Marcella Durand
• Synæsthesium
  Moira Egan
• Calligraphy Typewriters

  The Selected Poems of Larry Eigner
  Larry Eigner
• Gates & Fields
  Jennifer Firestone
• how to get over
  t’ai freedom ford
• At the Burning Abyss

  Experiencing the Georg Trakl Poem
  Franz Fühmann
• The End of Something
  Kate Greenstreet
• Blue Pearl
  Lesley Harrison
• Velvet
  Tom Healy
• Debths
  Susan Howe
• Motherwort
  Lyric Hunter
• The End

  Part One
  MC Hyland
• In Full Velvet
  Jenny Johnson
• My Ida
  Simone Kearney
• Tony Greene Era
  Kevin Killian
• I Am Flying into Myself

  Selected Poems, 1960-2014
  Bill Knott
• Lounge Act
  Wayne Koestenbaum
• The Swimmer
  John Koethe
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier
• Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment
  Alessandra Lynch
• Good Stock Strange Blood
  Dawn Lundy Martin
• The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters
  Bernadette Mayer
• blud
  Rachel McKibbens
• Subject to Change

  Trans Poetry & Conversation
  Edited by H Melt
• Wild Geese Returning

  Chinese Reversible Poems
  Michèle Métail
• In Darkest Capital

  Collected Poems
  Drew Milne
• Zippers & Jeans
  J. Peter Moore
• Afterglow (a dog memoir)
  Eileen Myles
• Descent & Other Poems
  Timothy Ogene
• Augury
  Eric Pankey
• Thousand Star Hotel
  Bao Phi
• Fiends Fell
  Tom Pickard
• I’m So Fine

  A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
  Khadijah Queen
• Matria
  Alexandra Regalado
• Invocation to Daughters
  Barbara Jane Reyes
• Shadowboxing

  poems & impersonations
  Joseph Rios
• Anemal Uter Meck
  Mg Roberts
• Quickening Fields
  Pattiann Rogers
• A TransPacific Poetics
  Edited by Lisa Samuels & Sawako Nakayasu
• Ordinary Beast
  Nicole Sealey
• There You Are

  Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera
  Joanne Kyger
• Royals
  Cedar Sigo
• Fort Not
  Emily Skillings
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• The New York Editions
  Michael D. Snediker
• Poems (2012-2017)
  Oki Sogumi
• Gatherest
  Sasha Steensen
• Gondwana
  Nathaniel Tarn
• Afterland
  Mai Der Vang
• Beast Meridian
  Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
• Crawlspace
  Nikki Wallschlaeger
• Out of the Question

  Selected Poems (1963-2003)
  Lewis Warsh
• Sonnets from Elizabeth’s
  Rosanne Wasserman
• In the Still of the Night
  Dara Wier
• The Silence That Remains

  Selected Poems
  Ghassan Zaqtan
• Songs for Schizoid Siblings
  Lionel Ziprin

Lloyd Schwartz: Favorite Poetry of 2017, as posted by WBUR’s The ARTery

• New Collected Poems
  Marianne Moore
• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart
• The Aeneid (translated by David Ferry)
  Virgil
• The Amoeba Game
  Tara Skurtu
• Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire

  A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
  Kay Redfield Jamison

a dozen more poetry books, by writers with Boston connections

• Personal Science
  Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
• Advice from the Lights
  Stephen Burt
• Children with Enemies
  Stuart Dischell
• Not Elegy, but Eros
  Nausheen Eusuf
• Sometimes We’re All Living in a Foreign Country
  Rebecca Morgan Frank
• Fast
  Jorie Graham
• After Jubilee
  Brionne Janae
• A Dangling House
  Maeve Kinkead
• May All My Wounds Be Mortal
  Karen Locascio
• Said Not Said
  Fred Marchant
• Elizabeth Bishop

  A Miracle for Breakfast
  Megan Marshall
• Reaper
  Jill McDonough

David Orr: Best Poetry of 2017, as published by The New York Times

[see also 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015]

• The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons
  A.R. Ammons
• The Essential W.S. Merwin
  W.S. Merwin
• I Am Flying into Myself

  Selected Poems, 1960-2014
  Bill Knott
• So Where Are We?
  Lawrence Joseph
• Before Dawn on Bluff Road / Hollyhocks in the Fog

  Selected New Jersey Poems / Selected San Francisco Poems
  August Kleinzahler
• Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment
  Alessandra Lynch
• Sun in Days
  Meghan O’Rourke
• Witch Wife
  Kiki Petrosino
• Fiends Fell
  Tom Pickard
• The Trembling Answers
  Craig Morgan Teicher
• Phrasis
  Wendy Xu

In The New Yorker, Dan Chiasson writes about “The Poetry I Was Grateful for in 2017” and mentions the following collections (and one biography).

[see also 2018 • 2016 • 2015]

• Afterland
  Mai Der Vang
• Simulacra
  Airea D. Matthews
• Calling a Wolf a Wolf
  Kaveh Akbar
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• Distant Mandate
  Ange Mlinko
• I Am Flying into Myself

  Selected Poems, 1960-2014
  Bill Knott
• Debths
  Susan Howe
• The Essential W.S. Merwin
  W.S. Merwin
• The Songs We Know Best

  John Ashbery’s Early Life
  Karin Roffman
• John Ashbery

  Collected Poems 1991-2000
  John Ashbery
• Richard Wilbur

  Collected Poems 1943-2004
  Richard Wilbur
• The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons
  A.R. Ammons
• The Aeneid (translated by David Ferry)
  Virgil
• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart