It would be silly to act as if the five titles on the Best Recommended List encapsulates everyone's votes — to do that we'd need a very long list. But to show the breadth of the voting which went into making the Best Recommended List in poetry, here is a list of the runner-up titles which received multiple votes, starting with the book which received the most votes.
Michael O'Brien, “Sleeping and Waking;” Geoffrey Hill, “Treatise of Civil Power;” Mark Strand, “New Selected Poems;” Ellen Bryant Voigt, “Messenger:” Kevin Young, “For the Confederate Dead;” Matthea Harvey, “Modern Life;” Tadeusz Rozewiz, “New Poems;” Elaine Equi, “Ripple;” Allen Grossman, “Descartes' Loneliness;” Cathy Hong Park, “Dance Dance Revolution;” Mark Jarman, “Epistles;” Alice Notley, “In the Pines;” Evan Boland, “Domestic Violence;” Henri Cole, “Blackbird;” Susan Howe, “Souls of Labadie;” David Kirby, “House on Boulevard Street;” Donald Revell, “A Thief of Strings;” David Shapiro, “Selected Poems;” Jean Valentine, “Little Boat;” Derek Walcott, “Selected Poems;” Tom Sleigh, “Space Walk;” Albert Goldbarth, “Kitchen Sink;” Robert Alter, tr. “The Book of Psalms;” Kelly Cherry, “Hazard and Prospect;” Deborah Garrison, “The Second Child.”
You can find the list of our top 5 vote-getters from the Best Recommended in poetry posted at the Academy of American Poets.