Poetry -- Chapter and Verse (Part 1): The Book Sense Bestseller List

Based on the last four weeks of sales of nearly 400 independent bookstores across America.

In honor of National Poetry Month, Book Sense is publishing a poetry bestseller list at the beginning and the end of April. Thanks to all the stores that report! Please check back in four weeks to see how customers respond to poetry events all around the country. (To view previous lists, click here.)

Attention Media: Please contact Kristen Gilligan at kristen@bookweb.org for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

1. Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems
Alice Walker, Random House, $22.95, 0375509046
2. Sailing Alone Around the Room
Billy Collins, Random House, $13.95, 0375755195
3. Good Poems
Garrison Keillor (Ed.), Viking, $25.95, 0670031267
4. Where the Sidewalk Ends
Shel Silverstein, HarperCollins, $17.99, 0060256672
5. New and Selected Poems
Mary Oliver, Beacon, $16, 0807068195
6. The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran, Knopf, $15, 0394404289
7. Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation
Roger Housden (Ed.), Harmony, $20, 1400047994
8. The Real Mother Goose
Blanche Fisher Wright, Scholastic, $9.95, 0590225170
9. Mother Goose
Sylvia Long, Chronicle, $22.95, 0811820882
10. Loving Through Heartsongs
Mattie J.T. Stepanek, Hyperion, $14.95, 0786869461
11. Ten Poems to Change Your Life
Roger Housden, Harmony, $14, 0609609017
12. Plum
Tony Mitton, Arthur A. Levine, $17.95, 0439364094
13. Nine Horses
Billy Collins, Random House, $21.95, 0375503811
14. Falling Up
Shel Silverstein, HarperCollins, $17.95, 0060248025
15. A Light in the Attic
Shel Silverstein, HarperCollins, $17.95, 0060256737
16. Rumi: The Book of Love
Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Coleman Barks (Trans.), HarperSanFrancisco, $21.95, 0060523166
17. The Soul of Rumi
Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Coleman Barks (Trans.), HarperSanFrancisco, $16.95, 0060604522
18. Ten Poems to Open Your Heart
Roger Housden, Harmony, $15, 1400045630
19. Picnic, Lightning
Billy Collins, Random House, $12.95, 0822956705
20. Celebrate Through Heartsongs
Mattie J.T. Stepanek, Hyperion, $14.95, 0786869453
21. Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR's All Things Considered
Catherine Bowman (Ed.), Vintage, $12, 0375713158
22. The Gift
Hafiz, Daniel Ladinsky (Trans.), Compass, $15, 0140195815
23. Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way
Charles Bukowski, Ecco, $27.50, 0060527358
24. The Essential Rumi
Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Coleman Barks (Trans.), HarperSanFrancisco, $14, 0062509594
25. 100 Love Sonnets
Pablo Neruda, University of Texas, $15.95, 0292760280
26. Inferno
Dante Alighieri, Modern Library, $9.95, 0812967216
27. Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices From the East and West
Daniel Ladinsky, Compass, $15, 0142196126
28.

The Poetry of Robert Frost
Robert Frost, Owl, $18, 0805069860

29. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
Seamus Heaney, Norton, $13.95, 0393320979
30. Seasons: A Book of Poems
Charlotte Zolotow, HarperTrophy, $3.99, 0060518545
31. The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master
Hafiz, Daniel Ladinsky (Trans.), Compass, $12, 0140196234
32. The Leaf and the Cloud
Mary Oliver, Da Capo, $15, 0306810735
33. What Do We Know
Mary Oliver, Da Capo, $15, 0306812061
34. Blue Hour
Carolyn Forche, HarperCollins, $24.95, 0060099127
35. Here's What You Do When You Can't Find Your Shoe: Ingenious Inventions for Pesky Problems
Andrea Perry, Atheneum, $16.95, 068983067X
36. Moon, Have You Met My Mother?
Karla Kuskin, Laura Geringer, $16.99, 0060271736
37. The War Prayer
Mark Twain, Perennial, $9.95, 0060911131
38. Heartsongs
Mattie J.T. Stepanek, Hyperion, $11.50, 1893622118
39. The Rose That Grew from Concrete
Tupac Shakur, MTV Books, $20, 0671028448
40. Twenty Love Poems: And a Song of Despair
Pablo Neruda, Penguin, $9.95, 0140186484
41. Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
Billy Collins, Random House, $13.95, 0812968875
42. Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?
Antwone Quenton Fisher, William Morrow, $9.95, 0060549327
43. 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East
Naomi Shihab Nye, Greenwillow, $16.95, 0060097655
44. Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems From WritersCorps
Various, HarperTempest, $6.99, 0064472647
45. What Do We Know
Mary Oliver, Da Capo, $22, 030680994X
46. In the Next Galaxy
Ruth Stone, Copper Canyon, $20, 1556591780
47. Poems to Read to the Very Young
Josette Frank (Ed.), Random House, $7.99, 0375804757
48. Bow Wow Meow Meow: It's Rhyming Cats and Dogs
Douglas Florian, Harcourt, $17, 0152163956
49. Source
Mark Doty, Perennial, $12.95, 0060935405
50. The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders
Jack Prelutsky, Petra Mathers (Illus.), Greenwillow, $16.95, 0688167195