- 2007: Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
- 2006: Late Wife by Claudia Emerson
- 2005: Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser
- 2004: Walking to Martha’s Vineyard by Franz Wright
- 2003: Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon
- 2002: Practical Gods by Carl Dennis
- 2001: Different Hours by Stephen Dunn
- 2000: Repair by C. K. Williams
- 1999: Blizzard of One by Mark Strand
- 1998: Black Zodiac by Charles Wright
- 1997: Alive Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller
- 1996: The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham
- 1995: The Simple Truth by Philip Levine
- 1994: Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa
- 1993: The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
- 1992: Selected Poems by James Tate
- 1991: Near Changes by Mona Van Duyn
- 1990: The World Doesn’t End by Charles Simic
- 1989: New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur
- 1988: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith
- 1987: Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
- 1986: The Flying Change by Henry Taylor
- 1985: Yin by Carolyn Kizer
- 1984: American Primitive by Mary Oliver
- 1983: Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell
- 1982: The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
- 1981: The Morning of the Poem by James Schuyler
- 1980: Selected Poems by Donald Justice
- 1979: Now and Then by Robert Penn Warren
- 1978: Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov
- 1977: Divine Comedies by James Merrill
- 1976: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
- 1975: Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
- 1974: The Dolphin by Robert Lowell
- 1973: Up Country by Maxine Kumin
- 1972: Collected Poems by James Wright
- 1971: The Carrier of Ladders by William S. Merwin
- 1970: Untitled Subjects by Richard Howard
- 1969: Of Being Numerous by George Oppen
- 1968: The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht
- 1967: Live or Die by Anne Sexton
- 1966: Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart
- 1965: 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman
- 1964: At The End Of The Open Road by Louis Simpson
- 1963: Pictures from Breughel by William Carlos Williams
- 1962: Poems by Alan Dugan
- 1961: Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley
- 1960: Heart’s Needle by W. D. Snodgrass
- 1959: Selected Poems 1928-1958 by Stanley Kunitz
- 1958: Promises: Poems 1954-1956 by Robert Penn Warren
- 1957: Things of This World by Richard Wilbur
- 1956: Poems – North & South by Elizabeth Bishop
- 1955: Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
- 1954: The Waking by Theodore Roethke
- 1953: Collected Poems 1917-1952 by Archibald MacLeish
- 1952: Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
- 1951: Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg
- 1950: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks
- 1949: Terror and Decorum by Peter Viereck
- 1948: The Age of Anxiety by W. H. Auden
- 1947: Lord Weary’s Castle by Robert Lowell
- 1946: no award given
- 1945: V-Letter and Other Poems by Karl Shapiro
- 1944: Western Star by Stephen Vincent Benét
- 1943: A Witness Tree by Robert Frost
- 1942: The Dust Which Is God by William Rose Benet
- 1941: Sunderland Capture by Leonard Bacon
- 1940: Collected Poems by Mark Van Doren
- 1939: Selected Poems by John Gould Fletcher
- 1938: Cold Morning Sky by Marya Zaturenska
- 1937: A Further Range by Robert Frost
- 1936: Strange Holiness by Robert P.T. Coffin
- 1935: Bright Ambush by Audrey Wurdemann
- 1934: Collected Verse by Robert Hillyer
- 1933: Conquistador by Archibald MacLeish
- 1932: The Flowering Stone by George Dillon
- 1931: Collected Poems by Robert Frost
- 1930: Selected Poems by Conrad Aiken
- 1929: John Browns Body by Stephen Vincent Benét
- 1928: Tristram by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- 1927: Fiddler’s Farewell by Leonora Speyer
- 1926: What’s O’Clock by Amy Lowell
- 1925: The Man Who Died Twice by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- 1924: New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Robert Frost
- 1923: The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- 1922: Collected Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of Prancing Poetry.
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of Prancing Poetry.
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll–
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul.
~ Emily Dickinson
Ruthless Rhymes
I previously quoted from Harry Graham’s Ruthless Rhymes For Heartless Homes. In The Game of Words , Willard R. Espy quotes two additional Ruthless Rhymes.
* * *
In the drinking well
Which the plumber built her
Aunt Eliza fell;
We must by a filter.
* * *
I had written to Aunt Maud
Who was on a trip abroad,
When I heard she’d died of cramp
Just too late to save the stamp.
