Poetry Best Sellers for August 22-29, 2010

The game of musical chairs at the top of the contemporary best seller list is in full swing this week, with Billy Collins scooting into first ahead of last week’s top seller, W.S. Merwin, who sits at number two. Beaming in the eighth position is Sherwin Bitsui. His second collection Flood Song has returned to the list after a summer off. Flood Song attempts to “extend and break the traditions of Native American writing,” according to Publishers Weekly, and New Mexico Magazine calls it “elegant, probative, and original.” Debuting on the list this week is Liberation Narratives, the selected poems of Haki R. Madhubuti, founder of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University.