Books
Our poetry best seller lists are based on data received from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales from more than 4,500 retail booksellers. Retailers included in the list include both large, high-volume retailers such as Borders and Amazon.com, and more than 400 smaller, independent bookstores. We generate the lists each week by tallying the number of books sold for recently published volumes of contemporary poetry, poetry anthologies, and children's poetry. The contemporary poetry best seller list is meant to reflect the current market for new poetry, and so excludes translations and new editions of classical works. Our small press list is based on Small Press Distribution's poetry sales to bookstores and individual customers, which are reported to us on a monthly basis.
Week of November 8, 2009
| Contemporary | |
| 1 | Leavings by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) |
| 2 | Evidence by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press) |
| 3 | The Shadow of Sirius (paperback) by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press) |
| 4 | Red Bird (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press) |
| 5 | Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler (Penguin) |
| READ MORE » | |
| Anthology | |
| 1 | Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds Billy Collins (Editor), David Allen Sibley (Illustrator) (Columbia University Press) |
| 2 | The Best American Poetry 2009 Edited by by David Wagoner and David Lehman (Scribner) |
| 3 | Christmas Poems Edited by Albert M. Hayes and James Laughlin (New Directions) |
| 4 | Good Poems for Hard Times edited by Garrison Keillor (Penguin) |
| 5 | The Best Poems of the English Language (paperback) edited by Harold Bloom (Harper Perennial) |
| READ MORE » | |
| Children's | |
| 1 | A Light in the Attic: Special Edition by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins) |
| 2 | Nursery Rhymes by Roger Priddy (Priddy Books) |
| 3 | Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka (author), by David Shannon (Illustrator), Loren Long (Illustrator), and David Gordon (Illustrator) (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing) |
| 4 | Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins) |
| 5 | Dirt on My Shirt by Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Bjorkman (illustrator) (HarperCollins) |
| READ MORE » | |
| Small Press | |
| 1 | The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta Press) |
| 2 | Face by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press) |
| 3 | Humanimal: A Project for Future Children by Bhanu Kapil (Kelsey Street Press) |
| 4 | Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean) |
| 5 | Breaking Poems by Suheir Hammad (Cypher Books) |
| READ MORE » | |
BEHIND THE LIST
Four Way Books, a non-profit press based in New York City, has three debuts on the contemporary best seller list this week: Sediment by Sandy Tseng (number 22), Home by Now by Meg Kearney (number 8), and What the Right Hand Knows by Tom Healey (number 30). The perenial for-profit powerhouse Knopf also has three titles on the list, an impressive feat dwarfed by Beacon Press, which has six titles on the list. All six are by Mary Oliver.
Between Heaven and Texas, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye, makes its debut on the anthology list this week at number 8. Nye has collected poems from a range of Texas poets to accompany the photographs of Wyman Meinzer, who has made a name for himself framing the Texas sky.
