Best poetry I read in 2017

The best books of poems I read this past year, presented without commentary, because I still don’t know how to talk about poetry without sounding like an idiot.

1: Opened Ground, Selected Poems 1966-1996, Seamus Heaney

2: Bye-and-Bye: Selected Late Poems, Charles Wright

3: Later Poems: Selected and New, 1971-2012, Adrienne Rich

4: Late Wife, Claudia Emerson

5: Digest, Gregory Pardlo

Up next: Best nonfiction and fiction I read in 2017. For more in this series over the years, see my Best Books pages.