Poetry best sellers for the week of July 11, 2010

Nick Lantz, a Wisconsin poet who has been posting a “micropoem” a day on Twitter for the past few months, has two books on the contemporary best seller list this week. His first book, We Don’t Know We Don’t Know, returns to the list at number 22, while his second book, The Lightning that Strikes the Neighbor’s House, debuts at number 28. New poet laureate W.S. Merwin remains top dog on the list, with Shadow of Sirius still at number 1.

This week we also have a new Small Press Distribution best seller list, where an environmental slant has taken over the top spots. Oregon poet and naturalist Charles Goodrich’s Going to Seed is at number 1, followed by the Sixteen Rivers Press anthology, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed. Things take a less overtly environmental turn at number 3 with Sawako Nakayasu’s Texture Notes, a book full of distortions that “encourage a state of deepened perception,” according to Craig Santos Perez.