Poetry best sellers February 20-27, 2011

Nick Flynn’s newest collection, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands, jumps fifteen spots to number 3 on this week’s contemporary best seller list. Now it resides in between Mary Oliver’s Evidence and Charles Bukowski’s Pleasures of the Damned, which is actually quite fitting. Returning to the list after a brief hiatus is Matthew Zapruder’s Come On All You Ghosts (number 20), which was just named a Believer Magazine Poetry Award finalist. At number 20, It’s just behind Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney, a collection which, according to Publisher’s Weekly, “sustain(s) a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life.”