# National Book Award for Poetry

The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The judging panel is made up of five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".
The category for Poetry was established in 1950 and has been awarded annually apart from the period 1984 to 1990.
The Poetry award and many others were eliminated from the program when it was revamped in 1984. It was restored in 1991, for current-year publications, with a standard five finalists announced a few weeks prior to the main event.
The award recognizes one book written by a US citizen and published in the US from December 1 of the previous year to November 30 in the award year. The National Book Foundation accepts nominations from publishers until June 15, requires mailing nominated books to the panelists by August 1, and announces five finalists in October. The winner is announced on the day of the final ceremony in November. The award is $10,000 and a bronze sculpture; other finalists receive $1000, a medal, and a citation written by the panel.
There were 148 nominations for the 2010 award. This had risen to 299 submissions by 2024.

## Winners and Nominees

† marks winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
* marks finalists of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
National Book Award for Poetry winners, finalists, and longlisted entries :
| Year | Author | Title(s) | Result |
| 1950 | William Carlos Williams | Paterson: Book Three and Selected Poems (two books) | Winner |
| 1951 | Wallace Stevens | The Auroras of Autumn | Winner |
| 1952 | Marianne Moore | Collected Poems † | Winner |
| 1952 | W. H. Auden | Nones | Finalist |
| 1952 | William Rose Benèt | The Spirit of the Scene | Finalist |
| 1952 | Richard Eberhart | Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1952 | Horace Gregory | Selected Poems of Horace Gregory | Finalist |
| 1952 | Randall Jarrell | The Seven-League Crutches | Finalist |
| 1952 | Theodore Roethke | Praise to the End! | Finalist |
| 1952 | Muriel Rukeyser | Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1952 | William Carlos Williams | Paterson: Book Four | Finalist |
| 1952 | William Carlos Williams | Collected Earlier Poems | Finalist |
| 1953 | Archibald MacLeish | Collected Poems, 1917–1952 † | Winner |
| 1953 | Stanley Burnshaw | Early and Late Testament | Finalist |
| 1953 | Thomas H. Ferril | New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1953 | Robert Hillyer | The Suburb by the Sea | Finalist |
| 1953 | Ernest Kroll | Cape Horns and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1953 | W. S. Merwin | A Mask For Janus | Finalist |
| 1953 | Byron H. Reece | A Song of Joy | Finalist |
| 1953 | Naomi Replansky | Ring Song | Finalist |
| 1953 | Kenneth Rexroth | The Dragon and the Unicorn | Finalist |
| 1953 | Jesse Stuart | Kentucky is My Land | Finalist |
| 1953 | Ridgley Torrence | Poems | Finalist |
| 1953 | Peter Viereck | First Morning: First Poems | Finalist |
| 1954 | Conrad Aiken | Collected Poems | Winner |
| 1955 | Wallace Stevens | The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens † | Winner |
| 1955 | Léonie Adams | Poems: A Selection | Finalist |
| 1955 | Louise Brogan | Collected Poems, 1923–1953 | Finalist |
| 1955 | E. E. Cummings | Poems, 1923–1954 | Finalist |
| 1955 | Robinson Jeffers | Hungerfield and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1955 | Archibald MacLeish | Songs for Eve | Finalist |
| 1955 | Phyllis McGinley | The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley | Finalist |
| 1955 | Merrill Moore | The Verse Diary of a Psychiatrist | Finalist |
| 1955 | LeRoy Smith | A Character Invented | Finalist |
| 1955 | May Swenson | Another Animal | Finalist |
| 1955 | William Carlos Williams | The Desert Music and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1955 | Marya Zaturenska | Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1956 | W. H. Auden | The Shield of Achilles | Winner |
| 1956 | Elizabeth Bishop | Poems, North and South† | Finalist |
| 1956 | John Ciardi | As If | Finalist |
| 1956 | Isabella Gardner | Birthdays from the Ocean | Finalist |
| 1956 | Donald Hall | Exiles and Marriages | Finalist |
| 1956 | Randall Jarrell | Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1956 | Adrienne Rich | The Diamond Cutters | Finalist |
| 1956 | William Carlos Williams | Journey to Love | Finalist |
| 1957 | Richard Wilbur | Things of This World † | Winner |
| 1957 | Egar Bowers | The Form of Loss | Finalist |
| 1957 | Leah Bodine Drake | This Tilting Dust | Finalist |
| 1957 | Charles E. Eaton | Greenhouse in the Garden | Finalist |
| 1957 | Kenneth Fearing | New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1957 | Robert Fitzgerald | In the Rose of Time: Poems, 1939–1956 | Finalist |
| 1957 | Katherine Hoskins | Villa Narcisse | Finalist |
| 1957 | Rolph Humphries | Green Armor on Green Ground | Finalist |
| 1957 | Joseph Langland | Poems in POEMS OF TODAY, III | Finalist |
| 1957 | Anne Morrow Lindbergh | The Unicorn | Finalist |
| 1957 | W. S. Merwin | Green with Beasts | Finalist |
| 1957 | Marianne Moore | Like a Bulwark | Finalist |
| 1957 | Ezra Pound | Section: Rock Drill | Finalist |
| 1957 | Kenneth Rexroth | In Defense of the Earth | Finalist |
| 1957 | John Hall Wheelock | Poems of Old and New | Finalist |
| 1958 | Robert Penn Warren | Promises: Poems, 1954–1956 † | Winner |
| 1958 | Daniel Berrigan | Time without Number | Finalist |
| 1958 | Phillip Booth | Letter from a Distant Land | Finalist |
| 1958 | Edwin G. Burrows | The Arctic Tern | Finalist |
| 1958 | Hilda Doolittle | The Selected Poems of H.D. | Finalist |
| 1958 | Richard Eberhart | Great Praises | Finalist |
| 1958 | Richmond Lattimore | Poems | Finalist |
| 1958 | Howard Moss | Swimmer in the Air | Finalist |
| 1958 | May Sarton | In Time Like Air | Finalist |
| 1958 | Eli Siegel | Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana | Finalist |
| 1958 | William Jay Smith | Poems: 1947–1957 | Finalist |
| 1958 | Wallace Stevens | Opus Posthumous | Finalist |
| 1958 | James Wright | The Green Wall | Finalist |
| 1959 | Theodore Roethke | Words for the Wind: Poems of Theodore Roethke | Winner |
| 1959 | John Ciardi | I Marry You | Finalist |
| 1959 | E. E. Cummings | Selected Poems, 1923–1958 | Finalist |
| 1959 | Archibald MacLeish | J.B. | Finalist |
| 1959 | Howard Nemerov | Mirrors and Windows | Finalist |
| 1959 | Theodore Roethke | Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 1959 | Karl Shapiro | Poems of a Jew | Finalist |
| 1959 | May Swenson | A Cage of Spines | Finalist |
| 1959 | William Carlos Williams | Paterson: Book Five | Finalist |
| 1960 | Robert Lowell | Life Studies | Winner |
| 1961 | Randall Jarrell | The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Poems and Translations | Winner |
| 1961 | W. H. Auden | Homage to Clio | Finalist |
| 1961 | J. V. Cunningham | The Exclusions of Rhyme | Finalist |
| 1961 | Robert Duncan | The Opening of the Field | Finalist |
| 1961 | Richard Eberhart | Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 1961 | Donald Justice | The Summer Anniversaries | Finalist |
| 1961 | Howard Nemerov | New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1961 | John Frederick Nims | Knowledge of the Evening | Finalist |
| 1961 | Anne Sexton | To Bedlam and Part Way Back | Finalist |
| 1961 | George Starbuck | Bone Thoughts | Finalist |
| 1961 | Eleanor Ross Taylor | Wilderness of Ladies | Finalist |
| 1961 | Theodore Weiss | Outlanders | Finalist |
| 1961 | Yvor Winters | Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 1962 | Alan Dugan | Poems † | Winner |
| 1962 | Robert Bagg | Madonna of the Cello | Finalist |
| 1962 | Phillip Booth | The Islanders | Finalist |
| 1962 | John Ciardi | In the Stoneworks | Finalist |
| 1962 | Hilda Doolittle | Helen in Egypt | Finalist |
| 1962 | Abbie Huston Evans | Faces of Crystal | Finalist |
| 1962 | Isabella Gardner | The Looking Glass | Finalist |
| 1962 | Horace Gregory | Medusa in Gramercy Park | Finalist |
| 1962 | John Holmes | The Fortune Teller | Finalist |
| 1962 | Denise Levertov | The Jacob's Ladder | Finalist |
| 1962 | Ned O'Gorman | Adam Before His Mirror | Finalist |
| 1962 | John Hall Wheelock | The Gardner and other Poems | Finalist |
| 1963 | William Stafford | Traveling Through the Dark | Winner |
| 1963 | Robert Creeley | For Love | Finalist |
| 1963 | Donald F. Drummond | The Drawbridge | Finalist |
| 1963 | Robert Frost | In the Clearing | Finalist |
| 1963 | Kenneth Koch | Thank You and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1963 | Howard Nemerov | The Next Room of the Dream | Finalist |
| 1963 | Winfield T. Scott | Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 1963 | Anne Sexton | All My Pretty Ones | Finalist |
| 1963 | William Carlos Williams | Pictures from Brueghel † | Finalist |
| 1964 | John Crowe Ransom | Selected Poems | Winner |
| 1964 | W. S. Merwin | The Moving Target | Finalist |
| 1964 | Louis Simpson | At the End of the Open Road † | Finalist |
| 1964 | May Swenson | To Mix With Time | Finalist |
| 1965 | Theodore Roethke | The Far Field (posth.) | Winner |
| 1965 | Ben Belitt | The Enemy Joy | Finalist |
| 1965 | John Berryman | 77 Dream Songs † | Finalist |
| 1965 | James Dickey | Helmets | Finalist |
| 1965 | Galway Kinnell | Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock | Finalist |
| 1965 | Robert Lowell | For the Union Dead | Finalist |
| 1965 | William Meredith | The Wreck of the Thresher | Finalist |
| 1966 | James Dickey | Buckdancer's Choice: Poems | Winner |
| 1966 | W. H. Auden | About the House | Finalist |
| 1966 | Elizabeth Bishop | Questions of Travel | Finalist |
| 1966 | Richard Eberhart | Selected Poems (1930–1965) † | Finalist |
| 1966 | Irving Feldman | The Pripet Marshes | Finalist |
| 1966 | Randall Jarrell | The Lost World | Finalist |
| 1966 | Louis Simpson | Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1967 | James Merrill | Nights and Days | Winner |
| 1967 | John Ashbery | Rivers and Mountains | Finalist |
| 1967 | Barbara Howes | Looking Up at the Leaves | Finalist |
| 1967 | Marianne Moore | Tell Me, Tell Me | Finalist |
| 1967 | Adrienne Rich | Necessities of Life | Finalist |
| 1967 | William Jay Smith | The Tin Can and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1968 | Robert Bly | The Light Around the Body | Winner |
| 1968 | Theodosius Dobzhansky | The Biology of Ultimate Concern | Finalist |
| 1968 | Denise Levertov | The Sorrow Dance | Finalist |
| 1968 | W. S. Merwin | The Lice | Finalist |
| 1968 | Kenneth Rexroth | Complete Poems | Finalist |
| 1968 | Louis Zukofsky | A-12 | Finalist |
| 1969 | John Berryman | His Toy, His Dream, His Rest | Winner |
| 1969 | Gwendolyn Brooks | In the Mecca | Finalist |
| 1969 | Galway Kinnell | Body Rags | Finalist |
| 1969 | John Thompson | The Talking Girl | Finalist |
| 1969 | Keith Waldrop | A Windmill Near Calvary | Finalist |
| 1970 | Elizabeth Bishop | The Complete Poems | Winner |
| 1970 | Daniel Berrigan | False Gods, Real Men | Finalist |
| 1970 | Lawrence Ferlinghetti | The Secret Meaning of Things | Finalist |
| 1970 | Robert Lowell | Notebook, 1967–68 | Finalist |
| 1970 | Philip Whalen | On Bear's Head | Finalist |
| 1971 | Mona Van Duyn | To See, to Take: Poems | Winner |
| 1971 | Gregory Corso | Elegiac Feelings American | Finalist |
| 1971 | W. S. Merwin | The Carrier of Ladders † | Finalist |
| 1971 | May Swenson | Iconographs | Finalist |
| 1972 | Frank O'Hara | The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (posth.) | Winner |
| 1972 | Howard Moss | Selected Poems | Winner |
| 1972 | A. R. Ammons | Briefings: Poems Small and Easy | Finalist |
| 1972 | Jon Anderson | Death & Friends | Finalist |
| 1972 | Robert Fitzgerald | Spring Shade: Poems, 1931–1970 | Finalist |
| 1972 | Robert Hayden | Words in the Mourning Time | Finalist |
| 1972 | John Hollander | The Night Mirror | Finalist |
| 1972 | Galway Kinnell | The Book of Nightmares | Finalist |
| 1972 | David Shapiro | A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel | Finalist |
| 1972 | Allen Tate | The Swimmers and Other Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1972 | James Wright | Collected Poems † | Finalist |
| 1973 | A. R. Ammons | Collected Poems, 1951–1971 | Winner |
| 1973 | W. H. Auden | Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1973 | John Berryman | Delusions, Etc. | Finalist |
| 1973 | Richard Eberhart | Fields of Grace | Finalist |
| 1973 | Samuel Hazo | Once for the Last Bandit | Finalist |
| 1973 | John Hollander | Town and Country Matters | Finalist |
| 1973 | Denise Levertov | FootPrints | Finalist |
| 1973 | Archibald MacLeish | The Human Season | Finalist |
| 1973 | James Merrill | Braving the Elements | Finalist |
| 1973 | Frederick Morgan | A Book of Change | Finalist |
| 1973 | Ishmael Reed | Conjure | Finalist |
| 1973 | Louis Simpson | Adventures of the Letter I | Finalist |
| 1974 | Adrienne Rich | Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 | Winner |
| 1974 | Allen Ginsberg | The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965–1971 | Winner |
| 1974 | Hayden Carruth | From Snow and Rock, from Chaos | Finalist |
| 1974 | Evan S. Connell, Jr. | Points for a Compass Rose | Finalist |
| 1974 | Peter Everwine | Collecting the Animals | Finalist |
| 1974 | Richard Hugo | The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir | Finalist |
| 1974 | Donald Justice | Departures | Finalist |
| 1974 | Eleanor Lerman | Armed Love | Finalist |
| 1974 | Audre Lorde | From a Land Where Other People Live | Finalist |
| 1974 | Alice Walker | Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1974 | Charles Wright | Hard Freight | Finalist |
| 1975 | Marilyn Hacker | Presentation Piece | Winner |
| 1975 | A. R. Ammons | Sphere: The Form of a Motion | Finalist |
| 1975 | John Balaban | After Our War | Finalist |
| 1975 | Albert Goldbarth | Jan 31 | Finalist |
| 1975 | Richard Howard | Two-Part Inventions | Finalist |
| 1975 | Josephine Jacobsen | The Shade-Seller | Finalist |
| 1975 | Michael Ryan | Threats Instead of Trees | Finalist |
| 1975 | Susan Fromberg Schaeffer | Granite Lady | Finalist |
| 1975 | David Wagoner | Sleeping in the Woods | Finalist |
| 1975 | Reed Whittemore | The Mother's Breast and the Father's House | Finalist |
| 1976 | John Ashbery | Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror † | Winner |
| 1976 | Richard Hugo | What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American | Finalist |
| 1976 | P.J. Laska | D.C. Images | Finalist |
| 1976 | John N. Morris | The Life Beside This One | Finalist |
| 1976 | Leonard Nathan | Returning Your Call | Finalist |
| 1976 | George Oppen | Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 1976 | Carolyn M. Rodgers | How I Got Ovah | Finalist |
| 1976 | Sherley Anne Williams | The Peacock Poems | Finalist |
| 1977 | Richard Eberhart | Collected Poems, 1930–1976: Including 43 New Poems | Winner |
| 1977 | Irving Feldman | Leaping Clear and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1977 | Margaret Newlin | The Snow Falls Upward | Finalist |
| 1977 | Muriel Rukeyser | The Gates | Finalist |
| 1977 | David Wagoner | Collected Poems, 1956–1976 | Finalist |
| 1978 | Howard Nemerov | The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov † | Winner |
| 1978 | Marvin Bell | Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See | Finalist |
| 1978 | Michael S. Harper | Images of Kin | Finalist |
| 1978 | Barbara Howes | A Private Signal | Finalist |
| 1978 | Charles Simic | Charon's Cosmology | Finalist |
| 1979 | James Merrill | Mirabell: Books of Number | Winner |
| 1979 | Robert Hayden | American Journal | Finalist |
| 1979 | Sandra McPherson | The Year of Our Birth | Finalist |
| 1979 | Philip Schultz | Like Wings | Finalist |
| 1979 | May Swenson | New & Selected Things Taking Place | Finalist |
| 1980 | Philip Levine | Ashes: Poems New and Old | Winner |
| 1980 | Stanley Kunitz | The Poems of Stanley Kunitz | Finalist |
| 1980 | David Wagoner | In Broken Country | Finalist |
| 1981 | Lisel Mueller | The Need to Hold Still: Poems | Winner |
| 1981 | Philip Booth | Before Sleep | Finalist |
| 1981 | Isabella Gardner | That Was Then | Finalist |
| 1981 | Mark Strand | Selected Poems* | Finalist |
| 1981 | Robert Penn Warren | Being Here | Finalist |
| 1982 | William Bronk | Life Supports: New and Collected Poems | Winner |
| 1982 | A. R. Ammons | A Coast of Trees | Finalist |
| 1982 | John Ashbery | Shadow Train | Finalist |
| 1982 | Douglas Crase | The Revisionist | Finalist |
| 1982 | Daniel Hoffman | Brotherly Love | Finalist |
| 1983 | Galway Kinnell | Selected Poems † | Winner |
| 1983 | Charles Wright | Country Music: Selected Early Poems* | Winner |
| 1983 | Mona Van Duyn | Letters from a Father and Other Poems | Finalist |
| 1983 | Jack Gilbert | Monolithos* | Finalist |
| 1983 | Linda Pastan | PM/AM | Finalist |
| Not awarded 1984 – 1990 ||||
| 1991 | Philip Levine | What Work Is | Winner |
| 1991 | Andrew Hudgins | The Never-Ending | Finalist |
| 1991 | Linda McCarriston | Eva-Mary | Finalist |
| 1991 | Adrienne Rich | An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988–1991* | Finalist |
| 1991 | Marilyn Nelson Waniek | The Homeplace: Poems | Finalist |
| 1992 | Mary Oliver | New and Selected Poems (vol. 1 of two) | Winner |
| 1992 | Hayden Carruth | Collected Shorter Poems | Finalist |
| 1992 | Louise Glück | The Wild Iris † | Finalist |
| 1992 | Susan Mitchell | Rapture | Finalist |
| 1992 | Gary Snyder | No Nature | Finalist |
| 1993 | A. R. Ammons | Garbage | Winner |
| 1993 | Mark Doty | My Alexandria | Finalist |
| 1993 | Margaret Gibson | The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices | Finalist |
| 1993 | Donald Hall | The Museum of Clear Ideas | Finalist |
| 1993 | Lawrence Raab | What We Don't Know About Each Other | Finalist |
| 1994 | James Tate | Worshipful Company of Fletchers | Winner |
| 1994 | Richard Howard | Like Most Revelations | Finalist |
| 1994 | David St. John | A Study for the World's Body | Finalist |
| 1994 | Heather McHugh | Hinge and Sign: Poems, 1968–1993 | Finalist |
| 1994 | Anne Porter | An Altogether Different Language | Finalist |
| 1995 | Stanley Kunitz | Passing Through: The Later Poems | Winner |
| 1995 | Barbara Howes | Collected Poems, 1945–1990 | Finalist |
| 1995 | Josephine Jacobsen | In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 1995 | Donald Justice | New and Selected Poems* | Finalist |
| 1995 | Gary Soto | New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1996 | Hayden Carruth | Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems, 1991–1995 | Winner |
| 1996 | Lucille Clifton | The Terrible Stories | Finalist |
| 1996 | Robert Hass | Sun Under Wood | Finalist |
| 1996 | Alicia Suskin Ostriker | The Crack in Everything | Finalist |
| 1996 | Charles Simic | Walking the Black Cat | Finalist |
| 1997 | William Meredith | Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems | Winner |
| 1997 | John Balaban | Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1997 | Frank Bidart | Desire* | Finalist |
| 1997 | Sarah Lindsay | Primate Behavior | Finalist |
| 1997 | Marilyn Nelson | The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 1998 | Gerald Stern | This Time: New and Selected Poems | Winner |
| 1998 | B. H. Fairchild | The Art of the Lathe | Finalist |
| 1998 | Alicia Suskin Ostriker | The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968–1998 | Finalist |
| 1998 | Linda Pastan | Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998 | Finalist |
| 1998 | Carl Phillips | From the Devotions | Finalist |
| 1999 | Ai | Vice: New and Selected Poems | Winner |
| 1999 | Louise Glück | Vita Nova | Finalist |
| 1999 | Clarence Major | Configurations: New and Selected Poems, 1958–1998 | Finalist |
| 1999 | Sherod Santos | The Pilot Star Elegies | Finalist |
| 1999 | C.K. Williams | Repair† | Finalist |
| 2000 | Lucille Clifton | Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 | Winner |
| 2000 | Kim Addonizio | Tell Me | Finalist |
| 2000 | Galway Kinnell | A New Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 2000 | Kenneth Koch | New Addresses: Poems | Finalist |
| 2000 | Bruce Smith | The Other Lover* | Finalist |
| 2001 | Alan Dugan | Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry | Winner |
| 2001 | Agha Shahid Ali | Rooms are Never Finished | Finalist |
| 2001 | Wanda Coleman | Mercurochrome | Finalist |
| 2001 | Cornelius Eady | Brutal Imagination | Finalist |
| 2001 | Gail Mazur | They Can't Take That Away from Me | Finalist |
| 2002 | Ruth Stone | In the Next Galaxy | Winner |
| 2002 | Harryette Mullen | Sleeping with the Dictionary | Finalist |
| 2002 | Sharon Olds | The Unswept Room | Finalist |
| 2002 | Alberto Rios | The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body | Finalist |
| 2002 | Ellen Bryant Voigt | Shadow of Heaven | Finalist |
| 2003 | C. K. Williams | The Singing | Winner |
| 2003 | Carol Muske-Dukes | Sparrow | Finalist |
| 2003 | Charles Simic | The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems | Finalist |
| 2003 | Louis Simpson | The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940–2001 | Finalist |
| 2003 | Kevin Young | Jelly Roll: A Blues | Finalist |
| 2004 | Jean Valentine | Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003 | Winner |
| 2004 | William Heyen | Shoah Train | Finalist |
| 2004 | Donald Justice | Collected Poems | Finalist |
| 2004 | Carl Phillips | The Rest of Love | Finalist |
| 2004 | Cole Swensen | Goest | Finalist |
| 2005 | W. S. Merwin | Migration: New and Selected Poems | Winner |
| 2005 | John Ashbery | Where Shall I Wander: New Poems | Finalist |
| 2005 | Frank Bidart | Star Dust: Poems | Finalist |
| 2005 | Brendan Galvin | Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965–2005 | Finalist |
| 2005 | Vern Rutsala | The Moment's Equation | Finalist |
| 2006 | Nathaniel Mackey | Splay Anthem | Winner |
| 2006 | Louise Glück | Averno | Finalist |
| 2006 | H. L. Hix | Chromatic | Finalist |
| 2006 | Ben Lerner | Angle of Yaw | Finalist |
| 2006 | James L. McMichael | Capacity | Finalist |
| 2007 | Robert Hass | Time and Materials: Poems, 1997–2005† | Winner |
| 2007 | Linda Gregerson | Magnetic North | Finalist |
| 2007 | David Kirby | The House on Boulevard St. | Finalist |
| 2007 | Stanley Plumly | Old Heart | Finalist |
| 2007 | Ellen Bryant Voigt | Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976–2006* | Finalist |
| 2008 | Mark Doty | Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems | Winner |
| 2008 | Frank Bidart | Watching the Spring Festival* | Finalist |
| 2008 | Reginald Gibbons | Creatures of a Day | Finalist |
| 2008 | Richard Howard | Without Saying | Finalist |
| 2008 | Patricia Smith | Blood Dazzler | Finalist |
| 2009 | Keith Waldrop | Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy | Winner |
| 2009 | Rae Armantrout | Versed † | Finalist |
| 2009 | Ann Lauterbach | Or to Begin Again | Finalist |
| 2009 | Carl Phillips | Speak Low | Finalist |
| 2009 | Lyrae van Clief-Stefanon | Open Interval | Finalist |
| 2010 | Terrance Hayes | Lighthead | Winner |
| 2010 | Kathleen Graber | The Eternal City | Finalist |
| 2010 | James Richardson | By the Numbers | Finalist |
| 2010 | C.D. Wright | One with Others | Finalist |
| 2010 | Monica Youn | Ignatz | Finalist |
| 2011 | Nikky Finney | Head Off & Split: Poems | Winner |
| 2011 | Yusef Komunyakaa | The Chameleon Couch | Finalist |
| 2011 | Carl Phillips | Double Shadow | Finalist |
| 2011 | Adrienne Rich | Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems: 2007–2010 | Finalist |
| 2011 | Bruce Smith | Devotions | Finalist |
| 2012 | David Ferry | Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations | Winner |
| 2012 | Susan Wheeler | Meme | Finalist |
| 2012 | Cynthia Huntington | Heavenly Bodies | Finalist |
| 2012 | Tim Seibles | Fast Animal | Finalist |
| 2012 | Alan Shapiro | Night of the Republic | Finalist |
| 2013 | Mary Szybist | Incarnadine | Winner |
| 2013 | Frank Bidart | Metaphysical Dog | Finalist |
| 2013 | Lucie Brock-Broido | Stay, Illusion | Finalist |
| 2013 | Adrian Matejka | The Big Smoke* | Finalist |
| 2013 | Matt Rasmussen | Black Aperture | Finalist |
| 2013 | Roger Bonair-Agard | Bury My Clothes | Longlist |
| 2013 | Andrei Codrescu | So Recently Rent a World, New and Selected Poems: 1968–2012 | Longlist |
| 2013 | Brenda Hillman | Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire | Longlist |
| 2013 | Diane Raptosh | American Amnesiac | Longlist |
| 2013 | Martha Ronk | Transfer of Qualities | Longlist |
| 2014 | Louise Glück | Faithful and Virtuous Night | Winner |
| 2014 | Fanny Howe | Second Childhood | Finalist |
| 2014 | Maureen N. McLane | This Blue | Finalist |
| 2014 | Fred Moten | The Feel Trio | Finalist |
| 2014 | Claudia Rankine | Citizen | Finalist |
| 2014 | Linda Bierds | Roget's Illusion | Longlist |
| 2014 | Brian Blanchfield | A Several World | Longlist |
| 2014 | Edward Hirsch | Gabriel: A Poem | Longlist |
| 2014 | Spencer Reece | The Road to Emmaus | Longlist |
| 2014 | Mark Strand | Collected Poems | Longlist |
| 2015 | Robin Coste Lewis | Voyage of the Sable Venus | Winner |
| 2015 | Ross Gay | Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude | Finalist |
| 2015 | Terrance Hayes | How to Be Drawn | Finalist |
| 2015 | Ada Limón | Bright Dead Things | Finalist |
| 2015 | Patrick Phillips | Elegy for a Broken Machine | Finalist |
| 2015 | Amy Gerstler | Scattered at Sea | Longlist |
| 2015 | Marilyn Hacker | A Stranger's Mirror | Longlist |
| 2015 | Jane Hirshfield | The Beauty | Longlist |
| 2015 | Lawrence Raab | Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts | Longlist |
| 2015 | Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Heaven | Longlist |
| 2016 | Daniel Borzutzky | The Performance of Becoming Human | Winner |
| 2016 | Rita Dove | Collected Poems 1974–2004 | Finalist |
| 2016 | Peter Gizzi | Archeophonics | Finalist |
| 2016 | Jay Hopler | The Abridged History of Rainfall | Finalist |
| 2016 | Solmaz Sharif | Look | Finalist |
| 2016 | Donald Hall | The Selected Poems of Donald Hall | Longlist |
| 2016 | Donika Kelly | Bestiary | Longlist |
| 2016 | Jane Mead | World of Made and Unmade | Longlist |
| 2016 | Monica Youn | Blackacre | Longlist |
| 2016 | Kevin Young | Blue Laws | Longlist |
| 2017 | Frank Bidart | Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 † | Winner |
| 2017 | Leslie Harrison | The Book of Endings | Finalist |
| 2017 | Layli Long Soldier | WHEREAS | Finalist |
| 2017 | Shane McCrae | In the Language of My Captor | Finalist |
| 2017 | Danez Smith | Don't Call Us Dead | Finalist |
| 2017 | Chen Chen | When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities | Longlist |
| 2017 | Mai Der Vang | Afterland | Longlist |
| 2017 | Marie Howe | Magdalene | Longlist |
| 2017 | Laura Kasischke | Where Now: New and Selected Poems | Longlist |
| 2017 | Sherod Santos | Square Inch Hours | Longlist |
| 2018 | Justin Phillip Reed | Indecency | Winner |
| 2018 | Rae Armantrout | Wobble | Finalist |
| 2018 | Terrance Hayes | American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin | Finalist |
| 2018 | Diana Khoi Nguyen | Ghost Of | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jenny Xie | Eye Level | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jos Charles | feeld* | Longlist |
| 2018 | Forrest Gander | Be With † | Longlist |
| 2018 | J. Michael Martinez | Museum of the Americas | Longlist |
| 2018 | Raquel Salas Rivera | lo terciario / the tertiary | Longlist |
| 2018 | Natasha Trethewey | Monument: Poems New and Selected | Longlist |
| 2019 | Arthur Sze | Sight Lines | Winner |
| 2019 | Jericho Brown | The Tradition † | Finalist |
| 2019 | Toi Derricotte | "I": New and Selected Poems | Finalist |
| 2019 | Ilya Kaminsky | Deaf Republic | Finalist |
| 2019 | Carmen Giménez Smith | Be Recorder | Finalist |
| 2019 | Dan Beachy-Quick | Variations on Dawn and Dusk | Longlist |
| 2019 | Camonghne Felix | Build Yourself a Boat | Longlist |
| 2019 | Ariana Reines | A Sand Book | Longlist |
| 2019 | Mary Ruefle | Dunce* | Longlist |
| 2019 | Brian Teare | Doomstead Days | Longlist |
| 2020 | Don Mee Choi | DMZ Colony | Winner |
| 2020 | Mei-mei Berssenbrugge | A Treatise on Stars* | Finalist |
| 2020 | Tommye Blount | Fantasia for the Man in Blue | Finalist |
| 2020 | Anthony Cody | Borderland Apocrypha | Finalist |
| 2020 | Natalie Diaz | Postcolonial Love Poem † | Finalist |
| 2020 | Rick Barot | The Galleons | Longlist |
| 2020 | Lillian-Yvonne Bertram | Travesty Generator | Longlist |
| 2020 | Victoria Chang | Obit | Longlist |
| 2020 | Eduardo C. Corral | Guillotine | Longlist |
| 2020 | Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | The Age of Phillis | Longlist |
| 2021 | Martín Espada | Floaters | Winner |
| 2021 | Desiree C. Bailey | What Noise Against the Cane | Finalist |
| 2021 | Douglas Kearney | Sho | Finalist |
| 2021 | Hoa Nguyen | A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure | Finalist |
| 2021 | Jackie Wang | The Sunflower Cast a Spell To Save Us From The Void | Finalist |
| 2021 | Threa Almontaser | The Wild Fox of Yemen | Longlist |
| 2021 | Baba Badji | Ghost Letters | Longlist |
| 2021 | CM Burroughs | Master Suffering | Longlist |
| 2021 | Andrés Cerpa | The Vault | Longlist |
| 2021 | Forrest Gander | Twice Alive | Longlist |
| 2022 | John Keene | Punks: New & Selected Poems | Winner |
| 2022 | Allison Adelle Hedge Coke | Look at This Blue | Finalist |
| 2022 | Sharon Olds | Balladz | Finalist |
| 2022 | Roger Reeves | Best Barbarian | Finalist |
| 2022 | Jenny Xie | The Rupture Tense | Finalist |
| 2022 | Rio Cortez | Golden Ax | Longlist |
| 2022 | Jay Hopler | Still Life* | Longlist |
| 2022 | Sherry Shenoda | Mummy Eaters | Longlist |
| 2022 | Quincy Troupe | Duende | Longlist |
| 2022 | Shelley Wong | As She Appears | Longlist |
| 2023 | Craig Santos Perez | from unincorporated territory [åmot] | Winner |
| 2023 | John Lee Clark | How to Communicate | Finalist |
| 2023 | Evie Shockley | suddenly we | Finalist |
| 2023 | Brandon Som | Tripas † | Finalist |
| 2023 | Monica Youn | From From | Finalist |
| 2023 | Oliver de la Paz | The Diaspora Sonnets | Longlist |
| 2023 | Charif Shanahan | Trace Evidence | Longlist |
| 2023 | Paisley Rekdal | West: A Translation | Longlist |
| 2023 | Annelyse Gelman | Vexations | Longlist |
| 2023 | José Olivarez | Promises of Gold | Longlist |
| 2024 | Lena Khalaf Tuffaha | Something About Living | Winner |
| 2024 | Anne Carson | Wrong Norma | Finalist |
| 2024 | Fady Joudah | | Finalist |
| 2024 | m.s. RedCherries | mother | Finalist |
| 2024 | Diane Seuss | Modern Poetry | Finalist |
| 2024 | Dorianne Laux | Life on Earth | Longlist |
| 2024 | Gregory Pardlo | Spectral Evidence | Longlist |
| 2024 | Octavio Quintanilla | The Book of Wounded Sparrows | Longlist |
| 2024 | Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Silver | Longlist |
| 2024 | Elizabeth Willis | Liontaming in America | Longlist |

## Multiple wins

See Winners of multiple U.S. National Book Awards
The following individuals received two or more National Book Awards for Poetry:
| Wins | Poet | Years |
| 2 | A. R. Ammons | 1973, 1993 |
| 2 | Alan Dugan | 1962, 2001 |
| 2 | Philip Levine | 1980, 1991 |
| 2 | James Merrill | 1967, 1979 |
| 2 | Theodore Roethke | 1959, 1965 |
| 2 | Wallace Stevens | 1951, 1955 |