1972 in poetry

Years in poetry:	1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975
Years in literature:	1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975
Decades in poetry:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Centuries in poetry:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Years:	1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975

[edit] Events

John Betjeman becomes Poet Laureate
The Belfast Group, a discussion group of poets in Northern Ireland, went out of existence this year. The group was started by Philip Hobsbaum when he moved to Belfast in 1963 and which included Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, James Simmons, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty and the critics Edna Longley and Michael Allen.
The American Poetry Review founded by Stephen Berg in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
May — Joseph Brodsky is expelled from the Soviet Union.
W. H. Auden, now a U.S. citizen, declares his New York neighborhood is too dangerous and returns to Oxford from the United States.

George Johnston, Happy Enough: Poems 1935-1972
Gwendolyn MacEwen, The Armies of the Moon
David Helwig, The Best Name of Silence
Leonard Cohen, The Engergy of Slaves
Earle Birney, Judith Copithorne, Andrew Suknaski, Bill Bissett, Four Parts Sand a selection of works by these concrete poets

Helen Gardner, The New Oxford Book of English Verse, replaced the 1939 revised selection by Quiller and Couch. 1972

A.R. Ammons:
- Briefings: Poems Small and Easy
- Collected Poems: 1951-1971, winner of the National Book Award in 1973
John Ashbery, Three Poems
W. H. Auden, Epistle to a Godson
Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Tom Clark, Back In Boston Again
John Berryman, Delusions, Etc. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux) posthumous
Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, editors, An Anthology of Twentieth Century Brazilian Poetry (Wesleyan University Press)
Gwendolyn Brooks, Aurora
Stephen Dobyns, Concurring Beasts
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Hermetic Definition
LeRoi Jones as Amiri Baraka, Spirit Reach
Philip Levine, They Feed They Lion
Archibald MacLeish, The Human Season: Selected Poems, 1926-1972, selected poems
James Merrill, Braving the Elements
Ned O'Gorman, The Flag the Hawk Flies
Mary Oliver, The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems
George Oppen, Collected Poems and Seascape: Needle's Eye
Kenneth Rexroth:
- 100 Poems from the French, (translator)
- Orchard Boat, (translator)
Theodore Roethke, Straw for Fire, posthumous selections made by David Wagoner from the poet's notebooks
Louis Simpson, Adventures of the Letter I, including "American Dreams" and "Doubting"
James Tate, Absences
Rosmarie Waldrop, The Aggressive Ways of the Casual Stranger (Random House)
Juan Rodolfo Wilcock (Argentine), La sinagoga degli iconoclasti, translated into English as The Temple of Iconoclasts

Matilde Camus, Manantial de amor (Love Spring)
Pedro Salinas, Poesía, selected by Julio Cortázar
Angel González, Palabra sobre palabra
Saul Yukievich, Fundadores de la nueva poesía latinoamericana, a collection of studies published in Spain by an Argentinian
Darie Novaceanu and J.M. Caballero Bonald, translators and editors, Poesía rumana contemporánea, a bilingual edition of Romanian poems translated into Spanish.

Jørgen Gustava Brandt, Upraktiske digte. Udvalg, selected poems from 1953 to 1971 (Denmark)
Odysseus Elytis, The Light Tree And The Fourteenth Beauty (Το φωτόδεντρο και η δέκατη τέταρτη ομορφιά) and The Monogram (Το Μονόγραμμα) (Greek)
Johannes Wulff, Udvalgte digte. Vi som er hinanden, collected poems from 1928 to 1970 (Denmark)