Year-End Lists

Verso Books: Best Poetry Books of 2017

• Kumukanda
  Kayo Chingonyi
• Hardly War
  Don Mee Choi
• Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
  Ursula K. Le Guin and Lao Tzu
• Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night
  Morgan Parker
• Wild Is the Wind
  Carl Phillips
• Night Sky With Exit Wounds
  Ocean Vuong

Entropy: Best Poetry Books of 2017 (numbered but “in no particular order”)

[see also 2019 • 2018]

1. Inherit
   Ginger Ko
2. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
   Chen Chen
3. WHEREAS
   Layli Long Soldier
4. Don’t Call Us Dead
   Danez Smith
5. Beast Meridian
   Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
6. In the Language of My Captor
   Shane McCrae
7. Field Theories
   Samiya Bashir
8. Nature Poem
   Tommy Pico
9. There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
   Morgan Parker
10. The Yellow House
    Chiwan Choi
11. I’m So Fine

    A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
    Khadijah Queen
12. In Full Velvet
    Jenny Johnson
13. Calling a Wolf a Wolf
    Kaveh Akbar
14. Here High Note, High Note
    Catherine Blauvelt
15. Outplace
    Lital Khaikin
16. recombinant
    Ching-In Chen
17. Love, Robot
    Margaret Rhee
18. Together and By Ourselves
    Alex Dimitrov
19. Good Stock Strange Blood
    Dawn Lundy Martin
20. Ordinary Beast
    Nicole Sealey
21. Thousand Star Hotel
    Bao Phi
22. Desgraciado
    Ángel Domínguez
23. The Flayed City
    Hari Alluri
24. Field Glass
    Joanna Howard and Joanna Ruocco
25. Madness
    Sam Sax
26. Hollywood Forever
    Harmony Holiday
27. The Happy End / All Welcome
    Monica de la Torre
28. A Turkish Dictionary
    Andrew Wessels
29. The Most Foreign Country
    Alejandra Pizarnik
30. Half-Light

    Collected Poems 1965-2016
    Frank Bidart
31. MyOTHER TONGUE
    Rosa Alcalá
32. The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded
    Molly McCully Brown
33. Thrust
    Heather Derr-Smith
34. Gnome
    Robert Lunday
35. the magic my body becomes
    Jess Rizkallah
36. In the Still of the Night
    Dara Wier
37. Afterland
    Mai Der Vang
38. Lessons on Expulsion
    Erika L. Sánchez
39. Gray Market
    Krystal Languell
40. Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut
    Vickie Vértiz
41. Light Into Bodies
    Nancy Chen Long
42. Resistance, Rebellion, Life

    50 Poems Now
    Edited by Amit Majmudar
43. Some Beheadings
    Aditi Machado
44. I Love It Though
    Alli Warren
45. Good Bones
    Maggie Smith
46. Map to the Stars
    Adrian Matejka
47. I Remember Nightfall
    Marosa di Giorgio
48. Hard Child
    Natalie Shapero
49. Prosopopoeia
    Farid Tali
50. Adrenalin
    Ghayath Almadhoun
51. My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
    Aja Monet
52. Fast
    Jorie Graham
53. Adam Cannot Be Adam
    Kelli Anne Noftle
54. Anemal Uter Meck
    Mg Roberts
55. Open Epic
    Julia Drescher
56. Pizza and Warfare
    Nikki Wallschlaeger
57. Unaccompanied
    Javier Zamora
58. The Book of Endings
    Leslie Harrison
59. To Love the Coming End
    Leanne Dunic
60. What’s Hanging on the Hush
    Lauren Russell

Dennis Cooper: Favorite Poetry of 2017 (“in no order”)

[see also 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2012]

• Debths
  Susan Howe
• Which Once Had Been Meadow
  Ann Jaderlund
• Lunch Portraits
  Debora Kuan
• Selected Poems

  1962-1985
  Clark Coolidge
• The Yellow House
  Chiwan Choi
• Salted Rook
  Douglas Payne
• Corporations Are People, Too!
  Jerome Sala
• Tony Greene Era
  Kevin Killian
• The Circus
  Clark Coolidge
• Outplace
  Lital Khaikin
• Prose Architectures
  Renee Gladman
• The Astropastorals
  Douglas Crase
• The Happy End / All Welcome
  Monica de la Torre
• Rock|Salt|Stone
  Rosamond S. King
• I Am Flying into Myself

  Selected Poems, 1960-2014
  Bill Knott

Michael Robbins: Notable Poetry of 2017, as published by The Chicago Tribune

[see also 2018 • 2016 • 2012]

• “Vladimir Mayakovsky” and Other Poems
  Vladimir Mayakovsky
• Hard Child
  Natalie Shapero
• Crawlspace
  Nikki Wallschlaeger
• Transnational Battle Field
  Heriberto Yépez
• Blackout
  Nanni Balestrini
• John Ashbery

  Collected Poems 1991-2000
  John Ashbery
• The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons
  A.R. Ammons
• The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons
  A.R. Ammons
• James Wright

  A Life in Poetry
  Jonathan Blunk
• The Book of Disquiet
  Fernando Pessoa

Publishers Weekly: 5 Best Poetry Books of 2017

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

• The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons
  A.R. Ammons
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• The Happy End / All Welcome
  Monica de la Torre
• In the Still of the Night
  Dara Wier
• We’re On

  A June Jordan Reader
  June Jordan

E. Ce Miller: 18 Best Poetry Collections of 2017, as published by Bustle

[see also 2018 • 2016]

• Testify
  Simone John
• bone
  Yrsa Daley-Ward
• Magdalene
  Marie Howe
• Earthling
  James Longenbach
• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart
• I Wore My Blackest Hair
  Carlina Duan
• The Sun and Her Flowers
  Rupi Kaur
• Afterland
  Mai Der Vang
• Unaccompanied
  Javier Zamora
• I Am Flying into Myself

  Selected Poems, 1960-2014
  Bill Knott
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
  Chen Chen
• Thousands
  Lightsey Darst
• In the Language of My Captor
  Shane McCrae
• Together and By Ourselves
  Alex Dimitrov
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier
• My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
  Aja Monet
• How Lovely the Ruins

  Inspirational Poems and Words for Difficult Times
  various poets, selected by Annie Chagnot and Emi Ikkanda

Chicago Review of Books: 8 Best Poetry Books of 2017

[see also 2018 • 2016]

• A People’s History of Chicago
  Kevin Coval
• Nature Poem
  Tommy Pico
• Electric Arches
  Eve L. Ewing
• Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing
  Charif Shanahan
• The Nightlife
  Elise Paschen
• Phrasis
  Wendy Xu
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• Perception
  Christina Pugh

Elizabeth Lund: 5 Best Poetry Collections of 2017, as published by The Washington Post

[see also 2018 • 2016 • 2015]

• Devotions

  The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
  Mary Oliver
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• Good Bones
  Maggie Smith
• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier

National Book Award: Poetry 2017

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2013]

Winner

• Half-Light

  Collected Poems 1965-2016
  Frank Bidart

Finalists

• The Book of Endings
  Leslie Harrison
• In the Language of My Captor
  Shane McCrae
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier

Longlist

• When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
  Chen Chen
• Afterland
  Mai Der Vang
• Magdalene
  Marie Howe
• Where Now

  New and Selected Poems
  Laura Kasischke
• Square Inch Hours
  Sherod Santos

Chicago Review of Books: 12 Best Poetry Books of 2016

[see also 2018 • 2017]

1. Thief in the Interior
   Phillip B. Williams
2. Poems

   New and Selected
   Ron Rash
3. Ghost County
   John McCarthy
4. Popular Music
   Kelly Schirmann
5. Night-Sky Checkerboard
   Oh Sae-young
6. The Black Maria
   Aracelis Girmay
7. 1989, The Number
   Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall
8. The Secret Birds
   Tony Fitzpatrick
9. child in a winter house brightening
   Abigail Zimmer
10. Unbearable Splendor
    Sun Yung Shin
11. Meditations of a Beast
    Kristine Ong Muslim
12. Cattle of the Lord
    Rosa Alice Branco