Dennis Cooper. My 50 favorite poems of all time (in no particular order)
11) Lyn Hejinian 'My Life,' 12) Eileen Myles 'Promotional Material,' 13) Ron Koertge 'The Father Poems,' 14) Ron Padgett 'After the Broken Arm,' 15) Amy Gerstler 'The Fetus' Curious Monologue,' 16) James Tate 'Absences,' 17) Bill Knott 'Untitled (Death),' 18) Jerome Sala 'The New Sadness,' 19) Elaine Equi 'Voice-Over,' 20) Tim Dlugos 'G-9,'
11) Lyn Hejinian 'My Life,' 12) Eileen Myles 'Promotional Material,' 13) Ron Koertge 'The Father Poems,' 14) Ron Padgett 'After the Broken Arm,' 15) Amy Gerstler 'The Fetus' Curious Monologue,' 16) James Tate 'Absences,' 17) Bill Knott 'Untitled (Death),' 18) Jerome Sala 'The New Sadness,' 19) Elaine Equi 'Voice-Over,' 20) Tim Dlugos 'G-9,'
21) Donald Britton 'Santa,' 22) Bob Flanagan 'The Slave Sonnets,' 23) Bernard Welt 'I Stopped Writing Poetry,' 24) Ed Smith ''Untitled (Tonight I aspire ... ),' 25) Jack Skelley 'Whammo Amnesia,' 26) Ai 'The Kid,' 27) James Wright 'Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,' 28) David Trinidad ''Of Mere Plastic,' 29) Bernadette Mayer 'Studying Hunger,' 30) Ron Silliman 'Tjanting,'
31) Kevin Killian ''Four Flies on Gray Velvet,' 32) Michael Lassell 'How to Watch Your Brother Die,' 33) Jack Spicer 'Billy the Kid,' 34) Kenneth Koch 'The Circus,' 35) Tom Clark 'Neil Young,' 36) Sylvia Plath 'Daddy,' 37) Sappho 'To One Who Loves Not Poetry,' 38) Constantin Cavafy 'He came to read,' 39) Charles Baudelaire ''The Remorse of the Dead,' 40) Antonin Artaud 'Artaud le Momo,'
41) Olivier Cadiot 'The Shipwreck,' 42) Clark Coolidge 'Mine: The One that Enters the Stories,' 43) Brad Gooch 'A dome of shiny met,' 44) James Krusoe 'Two Poems with My Father in Them,' 45) Peter Schjeldahl 'I Missed Punk,' 46) Rene Ricard 'The Slaves of Michelangelo,' 47) Robert Gluck 'Invaders from Mars,' 48) Pierre Reverdy 'Miracle,' 49) Rene Char 'Forehead of the Rose,' 50) Paul Celan 'Epitaph for Francois.'
* This list was compiled largely from memory, so it probably has some glaring omissions. If anyone out there wants to shoot back their favorite poems list -- it doesn't have to be 50, of course -- that would be great.