Attention Span 2009 – Don Share

Basil Bunting | Briggflatts | Bloodaxe | 2009

A conflict-of-interest choice, as I had a hand, or at least a few fingers, in it. But you get Bunting’s great poem, a trove of info about him including pictures, a DVD and an audio CD. No excuse for not owning this.

Janet Frame | Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems | Bloodaxe | 2008

She stored the drafts of her poems in a disused goose bath rather than become a famous poet on a list like this one.

Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson, eds. | Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic & Postromantic Poetry | University of California Press | 2009

We always knew that the roots of postmodernism reached way down to the Romantic; here’s ample and amplifying proof. Beyond that, there are astonishing things here you won’t find anywhere else, juxtaposed with work you thought you knew.

Cecilia Vicuna and Ernesto Livon Grosman, eds. |  The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology | Oxford University Press | 2009

Not just another anthology, but a sourcebook and storehouse of amazing value.

Bill Knott | Poems for Death | Lulu | 2009

Just one of many books Bill makes available for free; Bill is one of the best poets in the country. I guess we’re not supposed to say so.

Francisco de Quevedo, trans. Christopher Johnson | Selected Poetry of Francisco de Quevedo: A Bilingual Edition | University of Chicago Press | 2009

Back when poetry feuds meant something, Quevedo and Gongora were in something of a death match; now they’re both immortal, and with the publication of this book we’re lucky to have easily available translations of each.

Algernon Charles Swinburne | Major Poems and Selected Prose | Yale University Press | 2004

You think you know Swinburne?  Nah. This is some of the wildest, wackiest poetry ever written. Jerome McGann, who co-edited this selection, makes a great case for Swinburne as proto-modernist.

Eilean Ni Chuilleanain | Selected Poems | Wake Forest University Press | 2009

Like Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, a woman whose work reduces me to my piddly male essentials, leaving me to shiver in my shrinking skin.

Robin Blaser | The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser | University of California Press | 2006

Blaser’s poetics was talked about yet seldom taken to heart. This book collects some brave stuff, and sent me back to Arendt a changed and humble soul. Oh, and made me want to read Mary Butts.

Paul Blackburn | The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn | Persea Books | 1984

One of the first poets I ever fell in love with. I’ve fallen in love with him again.

Mark Weiss, ed. | The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry | University of California Press | 2009

It’s amazing to consider that without this book we’d know of scarcely a single one of the poets Weiss has gathered here, any one of whom would be famous were he or she a white North American.

More about Don Share here.