It’s Summer Book Bingo* time!!! And though Poetry is but one square, that doesn’t mean you don’t have Poetry options for just about all the rest of the squares too.

So here is a list of poetry collections which will satisfy 2017’s Bingo squares, curated with the generous help of Billie Swift, Kym Littlefield and Alexander Moyasenko of Open Books: A Poem Emporium, and Seattle poets Susan Rich, J.W. Marshall, and Joannie Stangeland (thank you!)

*One of my favorite annual Seattle events. (Here are the details for those unfamiliar with the general idea, and also a pdf of the bingo card if you want to get started before you make it to a library branch).

Let’s begin with the most subjective and random (which is to say pulled at random off my own bookshelf), CHOOSE A BOOK BY ITS COVER. And this post ends with the longest, (thanks to Billie Swift!), WASHINGTON STATE AUTHOR. Some of these categories obviously are a very few suggestions for what could be impossibly long lists (LGBTQIA AUTHOR, BY AN AUTHOR OF COLOR, anyone?!), but are at least a place to start.

Happy (POETRY) reading this summer!

CHOOSE A BOOK BY ITS COVER

Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross, Mark Yakich
Listeners at the Breathing Place, Gary Miranda
The World of the 10,000 Things, Charles Wright
Elegy, Larry Levis
Fire to Fire, Mark Doty
The Book of Images, Rainer Maria Rilke (trans Edward Snow)

*plus almost any 1950s or 1960s edition of a collection, man there was some cool jacket design back then

 

YOUNG ADULT

Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls by Karen Finneyfrock
Poetry Speaks: Who I Am edited by Elise Paschen, Dominique Raccah and Joy Harjo
19 Varieties of Gazelle by Naomi Shihab Nye
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse

 

BIOGRAPHY OR MEMOIR

I Know why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
The Real West Marginal Way, Richard Hugo
A Different Person, James Merrill
Crazy Brave, Joy Harjo
Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam

 

ADAPTED INTO A MOVIE

John Keats (“Bright Star“)
Elizabeth Bishop (“Reaching for the Moon“)
Pablo Neruda (“Il Postino“)

 

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Paradise Lost, by Pablo Auladell

 

BY AN AUTHOR OF COLOR

Selected Poems, Gwendolyn Brooks
The New Testament, Jericho Brown
Citizen, Claudia Rankine
Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey
Brutal Imagination, Cornelius Eady
My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Sandra Cisneros
Neon Vernacular, Yusef Komunyakaa

SET IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

The Country Between Us, Carolyn Forche 
Bellini in Istanbul by Lillias Bever
The Weight of Feathers by Geraldine Mills
J’accuse, Aaron Shabtai

 

GENRE THAT IS NEW TO YOU

Models of the Universe: Anthology of the Prose Poem, ed. Stuart Friebert and David Young
Great American Prose Poems, ed David Lehmnan

 

COLLECTION OF ESSAYS OR SHORT STORIES (by poets)

The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures […], C.D. Wright
The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo
Madness, Rack and Honey, Mary Ruefle
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Dylan Thomas

 

FICTION (by poets)

Death and the Good Life, Richard Hugo
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Mrs. Bridge, Evan S Connell
Banana Rose, Natalie Goldberg

 

ABOUT ART OR AN ARTIST

The Eye Like A Strange Balloon by Mary Jo Bang
Bellocq’s Ophelia by Natasha Tretheway
To Repel Ghosts, Kevin Young

 

FINISH IN A DAY

Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop
The Wild Party, Joseph Moncure March
Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, Cornelius Eady
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje

 

SCIENCE FICTION OR SCIENCE NONFICTION

Alphabet, Inger Christensen
The Monarchs: A Sequence by Alison Hawthorn Deming
The After, Melinda Mueller
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Jeannine Hall Gailey
Field Guide to the End of the World, Jeannine Hall Gailey

 

LGBTQIA AUTHOR OR CHARACTER

Walt Whitman
The Salt Ecstasies, James L White
James Merrill
Frank O’Hara
Gertrude Stein

 

WASHINGTON STATE AUTHOR

Joannie Stangeland
Susan Rich
J.W. Marshall
Christine Deavel
Madeleine DeFrees
Tod Marshal
Elizabeth Austen
Heather McHugh
Linda Bierds
Jane Wong
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Quenton Baker
Amaranth Borsuk
Sarah Mangold
Don Mee Choi
Deborah Woodard
Kevin Craft
Jason Whitmarsh
Rebecca Hoogs
Sarah Galvin
Rich Smith
Rick Barot
Claudia Castro Luna
Raul Sanchez
Pimone Triplett
Andrew Feld
Sarah Dowling
Arlene Kim
Martha Silano
Laura Jensen