Customer Reviews

The Best American Poetry 1996

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I was excited when I bought this book, since I had already read Best American Poetry, 1996 and 1993 and thought they were wonderful. After I read the first poem ("The Tomb", by Latif Asad Abdullah) my heart sank. Simply being on death row does not mean your poetry should be published in a best-of anthology for the whole year, and his poem was terrible. There are a couple of strong poems here and there in the book, but you have to wade through a huge amount of garbage (something a Best-of anthology is supposed to save you doing, by the way). I'm all for shaking up the literary scene, and I thought that BAP 1996, where the editor Richard Howard excluded all poets who'd been anthologized more than three times, was very strong. But including terrible poems simply because they express a minority point of view perpetuates all the bad stereotypes that anything diverse must necessarily be of poor quality. I hope the 1998 anthology will be better, but I no longer trust the "Best of American Poetry" brand name enough to order it without having browsed through it in a bookstore. I know that there was wonderful writing published in America in 1996. Unfortunately none of it is in here.

Rich has gone soft! She cares more for causes, race and gender of the authors than she does for quality. There are about 3 and a half strong poems in the collection, which is the worst edition of Best American Poetry by far.

It seems that the people who rated this book highly didn't actually like it all that much, but they felt that it 'struck a blow' agaist 'white male publishers.' Hello! This is almost the 21st Century. The blows have been struck! Women can vote! So can African Americans! If all you can say about the book was that it went against what white males considered good poetry, that doesn't mean it's worth reading!

One of the ten volumes is not represented at all; I failed to discover more than an authentic poem or two in it. The series editor, David Lehman, kindly suggested some possibilities, but the poets involved had done better work elsewhere in these volumes. That 1996 anthology is one of the provocations for this essay, since it seems to me a monumental representation of the enemies of the aesthetic who are in the act of overwhelming us. It is of a badness not to be believed, because it follows the criteria now operative: what matters most are the race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, and political purpose of the would-be poet. I ardently wish I were being hyperbolical, but in fact I am exercising restraint, very difficult for a lifelong aesthete at the age of sixty-seven. One cannot expect every attempt at poetry to rival Chaucer and Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, Whitman and Dickinson,Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane. But those poets, and their peers, set the measure: any who aspire to poetry must keep such exemplars always in mind. Sincerity, as the divine Oscar Wilde assured us, is not nearly enough to generate a poem. Bursting with sincerity, the 1996 volume is a Stuffed Owl of bad verse, and of much badness that is neither verse nor prose.

It seems like cultural and gender identities are becoming more important than literature itself when it comes to literary criticism. I am very concerned about people who sees this anthology as a victory of feminists and multiculturalists over the so called 'predominantly white male society'. A good literature should appeal to some universal experiences that we in some way understand as human beings. This is why Homer and Li-Po(or Rihaku) appeals to us even to this day, despite the fact that they lived in a different cultural settings. As T. S. Eliot says, "Poetry is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality". A good writer knows that it is what is 'behind the experience that is significant, not the specific content of the experience. To the extent one understands this, they realize the significance of writing 'impersonal poetry' that appeals to all kinds of people in any period of time, so long as they have the intelligence to understand this. It is disappointing to see that even this prestigious anthology would fall into the victim of feminism and multiculturalism, because it is one of the few anthologies out there that offers some genuine poetry.

Too many of the poems in this anthology are rambling and artless -- just plain bad. There are some worthy exceptions. "The Prisoner of Camau" by Henry Hart and "Reading Aloud to My Father" by Jane Kenyon come immediately to mind. Are the six or seven stellar poems in this anthology worth the price of admission? Perhaps. Adrienne Rich took a lot of chances with this collection. A pity so few of them were worthwhile.

It seems like cultural and gender identities are becoming more important than literature itself when it comes to literary criticism. I am very concerned about people who sees this anthology as a victory of the feminists and the multiculturalists over the so called 'predominantly white male society'. A good literature should appeal to some universal experiences that we in some way understand as human beings. This is why Homer and Li-Po(or Rihaku) appeals to us even to this day, despite the fact that they lived in a different cultural settings. As T. S. Eliot says, "Poetry is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality". A good writer knows that it is what is 'behind the experience that is significant, not the specific content of the experience. To the extent one understands this, they realize the significance of writing 'impersonal poetry' that appeals to all kinds of people in any period of time, so long as they have the intelligence to understand this. It is disappointing to see that even this prestigious anthology would fall into the victim of feminism and multiculturalism, because it is one of the few anthologies out there that offers some genuine poetry.

Fundamentally, this is the dullest, least interesting collection of poetry I've ever seen. And it's deeply hypocritical of Rich as well; her own poetry reveals a woman who is aware not only of feminist and multicultural criticism, but who is also well-versed in the strengths and mysteries poetry can offer. ..................... There isn't a single piece worth reading in the entire book.

I read all of the Best of ... Poetry until about 2000 when I found the quality had really deteriorated. The series was uneven at best, but the 1996 edition was full of wonderful poetry. I might not find Adrienne Rich's politics or poetry particularly agreeable but her critical sense is impeccable.

I have purchased each book in this series, and have loved them all, UNTIL this one. Hardly a decent poem in the entire book, a very , very poor selection. Skip this and buy The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997 , which is an excellent collection, well worth the time and money.