Poetry best sellers October 31-November 6, 2010

Erica Miriam Fabri opens her debut collection, Dialect of a Skirt, with the lines: “I will be frank: I want to become a poet / while I am still young and rare. / I want to be a foxy poet.” Who knows if being on the contemporary best seller list is part of being a foxy poet (Sure it is! Right?), but Fabri is in at number 29 this week, just behind Philip Levine and just ahead of Rae Armantrout. Not bad company. The top of the list is less young and rare, though no less special, populated as it is by Mary Oliver, whose Swan, Evidence, Red Bird, and New and Selected Poems Volume 2 take up four of the top ten spots.