I've always been fascinated by desert island lists - both my own (which are ever changing) and other folks' (which may be as well). Today I'm curious... if you knew you were going to be stuck on a deserted island (or locked in a cell or otherwise removed from libraries, bookstores and the internet) for exactly one year with no reading material besides ten books of poetry, which ten would you choose? My list would be a fairly even mixture of books I haven't read in their entirety and books I've finished but am aching to re-explore. I'd also lean heavily toward heavier books, ones with lots of pages and poems - and, if permitted, I'd define poetry as loosely as possible. Here's the list I'd make this morning:The Complete Poems by William Blake
ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak by d.a.levy
Collected Poems 1912-1944 by H.D.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (preferably ed. by David Bevington)
Collected Poems by Federico García Lorca (revised bilingual edition)
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
"Spain, Take This Chalice from Me" and Other Poems by César Vallejo (bilingual)
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (bilingual, ed. by Ilan Stavans)
Ulysses by James Joyce (I told you I'd define it loosely)
I've included three bilingual books both because I love their poetry and because their inclusion will be good for maintaining and refreshing my rusty Spanish. Why should I stop multitasking just because I'm on a desert island?
Now it's your turn. Which ten books of poetry would choose to have on your island? And why?
.
