2007

Robert Hass. Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005

In his first poetry collection in a decade, former poet laureate Hass is in great form, simultaneously blithe and commanding.

2006

Nathaniel Mackey. Splay Anthem

Part antiphonal rant, part rhythmic whisper, Nathaniel Mackey's new collection of poems, Splay Anthem, takes the reader to uncharted poetic spaces.

2005

W.S. Merwin. Migration: New and Selected Poems

The definitive volume by one of America's greatest poets

2004

Jean Valentine. Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

Includes all of Valentine's published poems.

2003

C.K. Williams. The Singing

C. K. Williams treats the characteristic subjects of a poet's maturity -- the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, the receding memories of childhood, the baffling illogic of current events -- with an intensity and drive that recall not only his recent work but also his early books, published forty years ago.

2002

Ruth Stone. In the Next Galaxy

In this, her eighth volume, she writes with crackling intelligence, interrogating history from the vantage point of an aging and impoverished woman. Wise, sardonic, crafty, and misleadingly simple, Stone loves heavy themes but loathes heavy poems.

2001

Alan Dugan. Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry

In this collection chronicling a 40-year career and its shifting concerns, Alan Dugan adds to his body of work with nearly three dozen new poems. Eloquent, blunt, funny, or bitter, the poet comments on every facet of life.

2000

Lucille Clifton. Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000

Clifton employs brilliantly honed language, stunning images and sharp rhythms to address the whole of human experience: birth, death, children, family, illness, sexuality, spirituality and injustice in antebellum and contemporary America. Hers is a poetry that is passionate and wise, not afraid to rage or whisper.

1999

Ai. Vice; New and Selected Poems

Ai's world desire has no boundaries. Known as the foremost poet of urban terror, part African American, Asian American, and Native American, Ai takes the reader on a journey into the heart, torn from the bared chests of the living and sacrificed to the ravenous dead.

1998

Gerald Stern. This Time: New and Selected Poems

An exhilarating new collection by the poet often applauded as the modern Walt Whitman. Poems in this substantial volume, many of which are no longer available in other editions, have been selected from seven previous collections (1972-1995). Along with these favorite poems redeemed, Gerald Stern offers a generous array of new work.

1997

William Meredith. Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems

1996

Hayden Carruth. Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems, 1991-1995

1995

Stanley Kunitz. Passing Through

1994

James Tate. Worshipful Company of Fletchers

A great new collection of poems by the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winner. Tate may just be our greatest poet, or at least our most interesting.

1993

A.R. Ammons. Garbage

A. R. Ammons, one of America's greatest living poets, uses an unlikely subject - garbage - as the occasion for a profound and often funny meditation on nature and mutability.

1992

Mary Oliver. New and Selected Poems

1991

Philip Levine. What Work Is

1990

No award given 

1989

No award given 

1988

No award given 

1987

No award given 

1986

No award given 

1985

No award given 

1984

Charles Wright. Country Music

A compilation of powerful and moving poems from early in the poet's career.

1983

Galway Kinnell. Selected Poems

1982

William Bronk. Life Supports

1981

Lisel Mueller. The Need to Hold Still

1980

Philip Levine. Ashes

1979

James Merrill. Mirabell: Books of Number

1978

Howard Nemerov. The Collected Poems

1977

Richard Eberhart. Collected Poems, 1930-1976

1976

John Ashberry. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

1975

Marilyn Hacker. Presentation Piece

1974

Allen Ginsberg. The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971

1974

Adrienne Rich. Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-1972

Adrienne Rich searches to reclaim, or to discover, what has been forgotten, lost or unexplored.

1973

A.R. Ammons. Collected Poems: 1951-1971

1972

Howard Moss. Selected Poems

1971

Mona Van Duyn. To See, To Take

1970

Elizabeth Bishop. The Complete Poems

1969

John Berryman. His Toy, His Dream, His Rest

1968

Robert Bly. The Light Around the Body

1967

James Merrill. Nights and Days

1966

James Dickey. Buckdancer's Choice

Poetry that is a blend of superb gift and subtle imagination by a mature and original poet at his finest.

1965

Theodore Roethke. The Far Field

1964

John Crowe Ransom. Selected Poems

1963

William Stafford. Traveling Through the Dark

1962

Alan Dugan. Poems

1961

Randall Jarrell. The Woman at the Washington Zoo

1960

Robert J. Lowell. Life Studies

1959

Theodore Roethke. Words for the Wind

1958

Robert Penn Warren. Promises: Poems, 1954-1956

1957

Richard Wilbur. Things of this World

1956

W.H. Auden. The Shield of Achilles

1955

Wallace Stevens. Collected Poems

Wallace Stevens lived long enough to see the establishment of his unquestioned position as one of the significant and enduring poets of twentieth-century America. For more than four decades he had written poetry marked by inclusive thoughtfulness, magical evocativeness of language, and an unmistakable individuality that sets him apart from his confreres. The present volume was published to honor him on his seventy-fifth birthday, October 2, 1954.

1954

Conrad Aiken. Collected Poems

1953

Archibald MacLeish. Collected Poems 1917-1952

This expanded volume of the distinguished poet's work contains 29 previously uncollected poems, some that had been published, and some found in manuscript after MacLeish's death in 1982. This is the definitive volume produced by a life that filled several careers as writer, teacher, and public servant, but was devoted above all to poetry.

1952

Marianne Moore. Collected Poems

1951

Wallace Stevens. The Auroras of Autumn

1950

William Carlos Williams. Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems

Compassionate but clear-eyed poem about man and modernity in America.