When it comes to annual best-books lists, poetry is the cat that wandered into the dog show. No matter how much one tries, as The Times does, to include poets among the various biographers, essayists, novelists and so forth, it’s hard not to feel that poetry is fundamentally different from prose of any stripe. (Prose, said Coleridge, is “words in their best order,” whereas poetry is “the best words in their best order” — but then, Coleridge was a poet.) So here are 10 American poetry collections published in 2014 that I would recommend not only to poetry veterans, but to readers coming to the form with limited experience. In keeping with Times policy, this list includes no friends, lovers, babysitters or college roommates. (If I were allowed to include friends, my list would certainly include Maureen McLane’s “This Blue,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award.) In the interests of spreading the wealth, I’ve also generally favored work by poets I haven’t written about already.
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