Top Five Poems: 2009–2010

Humor and heart characterize the five poems selected for special mention from among the many Poems of the Week we loved this past year. These Top Five include Erin Belieu’s sardonic, vulnerable poem about watching a sport she despises; Luisa A. Igloria’s musings on holding close what is ours; Lisa Olstein’s quiet poem in the voice of a lepidopterist; Anne Marie Rooney’s tour de force of wordplay that “hisses like a firehouse”; and Mark Bibbins’s candid condemnation of our forgetfulness. Read individually or all together, these poems perfectly evoke a human desire for poetry not just to recapitulate experience but, in Olstein’s simple phrase, to “be an experience.”

The Poem of the Week series for 2010–2011 starts on November 8. If you would like to send a poem for consideration as a Poem of the Week, please see our Guidelines. Each October the Top Five Poems are selected for special notice.

Congratulations to the winners. Each receives a $200 award.

Erin Belieu
I Heart Your Dog’s Head
He is the illuminated manuscript of cruel, successful men.
Mark Bibbins
Bring Us a Souvenir from the Next War
We can’t know anyone but have a way of not minding.
Luisa A. Igloria
On the Difficulty of Discerning Shapes in the Distance
What’s dark if not the catalyst of desire?
Lisa Olstein
My Only Life
My shadow is cast by the paleness of a certain star.
Anne Marie Rooney
Instructions for Wooing Me (Monster That I Am)
In your mind I burn like thirty watts of unstrained honey.

Top Five Poems: 2009–2010

He is the illuminated manuscript of cruel, successful men.

We can’t know anyone but have a way of not minding.

What’s dark if not the catalyst of desire?

My shadow is cast by the paleness of a certain star.

In your mind I burn like thirty watts of unstrained honey.