C.D. Wright's off-the-cuff poetry list:
It's really books: Erin Moure's Sheepish Love, Civilian Beauty, Evan S. Connell's Notes Found in a Bottle on a Beach at Carmel, Arthur Sze's River River, Philip Foss's Composition of Glass, Mei Mei Berssenbrugge's Empathy, Forrest's Deeds of Utmost Kindness, David Antin's Tuning, Merwin's Notes on An Unfinished Accompaniment, Michael Ondaatje's Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Ron Silliman's Ketjak, Creeley's For Love, Bronk's Life Supports, Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day, Cole Swensen's Park, Frank Stanford's Constant Stranger, Palmer's Notes From Echo Lake, Lorine Niedecker's The Granite Pail, Oppen's Selected, Frank O'Hara's Selected, Forche's The Country Between Us, Lyn Hejinian's My Life, Jacque Roubaud's Some Thing Black. Even the poets I love—it's usually the one title that affected me first and foremost. After that I'm along for the ride, and I can continue to be astonished. But that first hit is what clobbers me, and sometimes a later work, such as Ashbery's Flow Chart and Merwin's The Folding Cliffs, and Ondaatje's Handwriting, etc. will keep giving back to you in their fullness.