I'm not saying these are THE top ten books or even my top ten favorites, but books that have shaped my thinking/writing.
- Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons (expected, no?)
- Rosmarie Waldrop's Lawn of Excluded Middle (OOP, but can be found in Curves to the Apple)
- Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (okay, not poetry, but you have to give me this one)
- Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems
- Lyn Hejinian's My Life
- Harryette Mullen's S*PeRM**K*T and Trimmings (also OOP, so go get Recyclopedia)
- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's Empathy (OOP, check it out of yr local library)
- Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (bow to the hybrid)
- Li-Young Lee's Rose and Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses and In Mad Love and War (all three for nostalgic reasons)
- Lee Bartlett's The Greenhouse Effect and Talking Poetry (I studied with Lee in grad school, and working with him was important for my expansion, development, etc.)
- Donald M. Allen and Warren Tallman's The Poetics of the New American Poetry
- Yes, I exceeded the number 10.
