The National Book Foundation has announced these five books of poetry as finalists for the 2006 National Book Awards. Most of the nominated poets have academic connections -- but their poems roam all around the history of the world in cultural references & context, and the five books form no kind of academic orthodoxy. Here are links for poetry lovers who want to read all five and choose their own favorite before the winner is announced on November 15, 2006.
1. Averno, by Louise Glück
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006) This is the 11th collection published by Louise Glück, most private of our recent U.S. Poets Laureate. Reviewing it in The Washington Post, Maureen McLane said, “Reading Louise Glück is excruciating--and this is a compliment... she walks a high-wire between the oracular and everyday, the absolute and the ephemeral... Glück ushers us into the realm of the dead: Averno is the lake west of Naples that, according to the Romans, was the entrance to the Underworld.” 
2. Chromatic, by H.L. Hix
(Etruscan Press, 2006) Hix is an academic (he directs the University of Wyoming creative writing program), but despite his long list of publications in criticism & translation, he is not quite an academic poet (his university major was philosophy, not literature). Chromatic begins with Spinoza--“Desire is the very nature or essence of every single individual”--& quotes the titles for its 3 poem sequences from 3 very different historical sources: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Duke Ellington & J.S. Bach.3. Angle of Yaw, by Ben Lerner
(Copper Canyon Press, 2006) Ben Lerner is a Kansan transplanted to California; he teaches at California College of the Arts, lives in Berkeley, and is co-founder & co-editor of NO: A Journal of the Arts. In his 2004 interview with Kent Johnson in Jacket, he described his concerns in Angle of Yaw: “the commercialization of public space and speech... the ways that technologies of viewing... replace the God-term with a camera that feeds our spectacular culture an image of itself...”4. Splay Anthem, by Nathaniel Mackey
(New Directions, 2006) Mackey is essential & unique; his poetry sings at the junction of jazz music & African-American mythology. He is a literature professor at UC Santa Cruz, a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & editor of Hambone. His work is an epic tapestry; New Directions says of Splay Anthem that it “weaves together two ongoing serial poems Mackey has been writing for over 20 years, Song of the Andoumboulou and Mu,” tracing “the lost tribe of We through waking and dreamtime.”5. Capacity, by James McMichael
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006) James McMichael is a professor of English & comparative literature and director of the MFA program at UC Irvine. His five books of poetry have a strong story-telling thread -- he has written a number of “verse essays and poetic narratives.” Capacity is just 7 poems, addressing the basic “things people need to live... ocean, land, animate bodies, shelter, thoughts, feelings, talk, sex....”