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 March 7, 2010
| Contemporary | |
| 1 | Ballistics (paperback) by Billy Collins (Random House) |
| 2 | The Best of It by Kay Ryan (Grove Press) |
| 3 | Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland (Graywolf Press) |
| 4 | The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (paperback) by Billy Collins (Random House) |
| 5 | Red Bird (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press) |
| READ MORE » | |
| Anthology | |
| 1 | Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds Billy Collins (Editor), David Allen Sibley (Illustrator) (Columbia University Press) |
| 2 | Good Poems for Hard Times edited by Garrison Keillor (Penguin) |
| 3 | 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day edited by Billy Collins (Random House) |
| 4 | The Best American Poetry 2009 Edited by by David Wagoner and David Lehman (Scribner) |
| 5 | The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry Edited by Ilya Kaminsky, and Susan Harris (Ecco) |
| READ MORE » | |
| Children's | |
| 1 | A Light in the Attic: Special Edition by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins) |
| 2 | Dirt on My Shirt by Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Bjorkman (illustrator) (HarperCollins) |
| 3 | Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins) |
| 4 | Mary Engelbreit's Mother Goose: One Hundred Best-Loved Verses by Mary Engelbreit (illustrator) (HarperCollins) |
| 5 | Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose by Scott Gustafson (illustrator) (The Greenwich Workshop Press) |
| READ MORE » | |
| Small Press | |
| 1 | The Business of Fancydancing by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press) |
| 2 | Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean) |
| 3 | Necessary Stranger by Graham Foust (Flood Editions) |
| 4 | A Mouth in California by Graham Foust (Flood Editions) |
| 5 | The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater: 1945–1985 Kevin Killian and David Brazil, Eds. (Kenning Editions) |
| READ MORE » | |
BEHIND THE LIST
Debuting at number 22 on this week’s contemporary list, Dot-to-Dot, Oregon is a collection of travel poems by Sid Miller, editor of the Burnside Review. Miller, who bartends as well as edits, deploys three speakers to peruse—and critique—the landmarks of Oregon in this Ooligan Press title. Also debuting this week is Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon, a collection that takes on pop culture in all its guises, from senators looking for love in bathroom stalls to shoppers rummaging through Wal-Mart. The Milkweed Editions book is tied at number 29 with books by Charles Bukowski, Keith Waldrop, and Katha Pollitt.
On the Anthology list, birds reign supreme for yet another week, followed shortly by the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. Ilya Kaminsky, one of that book’s editors, talks about the trouble of translation in this month’s Poetry magazine.
