Poetry Best Sellers

Our poetry best seller lists are based on data received from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales from more than 4,500 retail booksellers. We generate the lists each week by tallying the number of books sold for recently published volumes of contemporary poetry and children's poetry. We occasionally publish other lists, such as a poetry anthology best seller list. 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.

Contemporary
1. Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem by Maya Angelou (Random House)
2. The Trouble with Poetry: and Other Poems by Billy Collins (Random House)
3. Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins (Random House Trade)
4. New and Selected Poems: Volume Two by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
5. Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser (Copper Canyon Press)

Book Picks

Every week we dig through review copies, talk to booksellers, and survey other readers of poetry to find books to recommend to different audiences. Here are the first six picks.

By The Numbers

In this month's mathematical look at poetry, we tackle anthologies.

The 16 Most Taught Poems in America's College Classrooms
The editors at W.W. Norton recently shared with us the results of a survey they conducted in preparing for the next edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. They asked college professors of English which poems they most often taught in their classrooms. Here are the results:

1. General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
2. Sonnet #130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" by William Shakespeare
3. Holy Sonnet #14, "Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You" by John Donne
4. Ode to the West Wind by Percey Shelley
5. Go Down Moses, Spiritual


Book Arts: First American Poetry Anthology