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Our poetry best seller lists are based on data received from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales from more than 4,500 retail booksellers. Retailers included in the list include both large, high-volume retailers such as Borders and Amazon.com, and more than 400 smaller, independent bookstores. We generate the lists each week by tallying the number of books sold for recently published volumes of contemporary poetry, poetry anthologies, and children's poetry. The contemporary poetry best seller list is meant to reflect the current market for new poetry, and so excludes translations and new editions of classical works. Our small press list is based on Small Press Distribution's poetry sales to bookstores and individual customers, which are reported to us on a monthly basis.

Week of November 02, 2008

Contemporary
1	Ballistics by Billy Collins (Random House)
2	The Niagara River by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)
3	The Truro Bear and Other Adventures by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
4	Red Bird by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
5	Thirst (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)

Anthology
1	Christmas Poems Edited by Albert M. Hayes and James Laughlin (New Directions)
2	The Best American Poetry 2008 edited by Charles Wright (Scribner)
3	Good Poems for Hard Times edited by Garrison Keillor (Penguin)
4	Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov (Harcourt)
5	The Best Poems of the English Language (paperback) edited by Harold Bloom (Harper Perennial)

Children's
1	Where the Sidewalk Ends (30th Anniversary Edition) by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins)
2	Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox (Harcourt Children's Books)
3	Nursery Rhymes by Roger Priddy (Priddy Books)
4	Hip Hop Speaks to Children with CD: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat by Nikki Giovanni (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky)
5	Dirt on My Shirt by Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Bjorkman (illustrator) (HarperCollins)

Small Press
1	from Unincorporated Territory by Craig Santos Perez (Tinfish Press)
2	Action Kylie by Kevin Killian (ingirumimusnocteetcomsumimurigni)
3	There Are Birds John Taggart (Flood Editions)
4	Permanent Address Lorna Knowles Blake (Ashland Poetry Press)
5	The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford (Lost Roads)

Behind the List

We have a five-way tie at Number 30 on the bestseller list this week: Charles Bukowski, David Lehman, Mary Oliver, and Thomas F. Flynn all fight it out for last place (and Bukowski fights dirty). Avoiding that mess at Number 29 is Kevin Young's Dear Darkness, a collection of odes and laments from the prolific Emory professor. Other debuts of note: Linda Bierds' Flight: New and Selected Poems at Number 28 and Lucille Clifton's Voices at Number 26.

On the Small Press list, the late Arkansas poet Frank Stanford has two books in the top 10: The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, a loose baggy monster about civil rights, the South, and hard living, is at number 5, and the posthumous volume of more well-behaved verse, You, comes in at number 6.

The New Directions collection of heady Christmas Poems, edited by Albert M. Hayes and James Laughlin and featuring the likes of Virgil and Bernadette Mayer, takes over number 1 on the anthology list.

Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face by the 2006 Poetry Foundation Children's Laureate Jack Prelutsky makes its debut on the Children's List at number 10, while Jill MacDonald's illustrated version of The Itsy Bitsy Spider crawls its way to number 8. Shel Silverstein still rules at number 1 until further notice.

BOOK PICKS

02.07.08

Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow
by Joyce Sidman, Beth Krommes (illustrator)
Houghton Mifflin
$16.00
From the scratchboard illustrations to the poems presented as riddles, an air of mystery envelops this picture book about meadow life. What comes “[i]n the dark . . . in the leaf-crisp air just before sunlight”? Who hides in “bubbles of pearl, all in a clustery, bubbly swirl”? Which meadow visitors are “the tall ones with crowns of velvet”? Six- to ten-year-old naturalists—and grasshopper chasers of all ages—will enjoy guessing the answers to author Joyce Sidman’s enticing questions. (Dew, spittlebugs, and deer, if you must know.) Beth Krommes’ colorful, detailed pictures reveal clues, and Sidman also intersperses helpful bits of factual prose between the poems. Butterfly Eyes was named Best Poetry Book of 2006 by the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Awards, and Sidman’s other works, including Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems and Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry, have also landed on a number of “best of” lists. (Song of the Water Boatman won a Caldecott honor for its art, by Beckie Prange.) It’s no secret that the smart match of delightful wordplay, science, and art make Butterfly Eyes a must-have for nature-loving children.