The Best American Poetry 1999 [Paperback]

David Lehman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Best American Poetry | Publication Date: September 8, 1999

The 1999 edition of The Best American Poetry will exceed the expectations of the many thousands of readers who eagerly await the annual arrival of this "truly memorable anthology" (Chicago Tribune). Guest editor Robert Bly, an award-winning poet and translator -- famous, too, for his leadership role in the men's movement and his bestselling book, Iron John -- has made selections that present American poetry in all its dazzling originality, richness, and variety. The year's poems are striking in their vibrancy; they all display that essential energy that Bly calls "heat," whether the heat of friendship, the heat of form, or the heat that results when a poet "brings the soul up close to the thing" he or she is contemplating. With comments from the poets illuminating their work, The Best American Poetry 1999 reflects the most exciting and memorable poetry being written at the end of the millennium.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Now in its 12th year, the Best American franchise is perhaps the biggest-selling in poetry. Each year, poet and critic Lehman taps a different gray (or graying) eminence to help choose 75 or so poems from the nation's literary magazines. This year's guest editor, Iron John author and midwestern surrealist Robert Bly (Eating the Honey of Words; Forecasts, Mar 29), has followed his predecessors in the seriesAJohn Hollander, Richard Howard, Adrienne Rich and Harold Bloom, to name a fewAby choosing poems that complement his own style and tendencies. Short, crypto-surreal works by Franco Pagnucci, Thomas R. Smith and Peggy Steele strongly recall Bly's work from the '60s, while Charles Wright, Lydia Davis, Gray Jacobik, and John Balaban turn in halcyon tableaux and wistful vignettes worthy of the superlative in the title. The rest of the book is mainly divided between the academicAmany of the poems are tributes to well-established literary men (Thoreau, Hemingway, Pasternak, Lawrence, Kierkegaard, Freud)Athe poor-spirited (Dick Allen's unfunny "The Selfishness of the Poetry Reader"; John Brehm's half-apologetic account of hating his students in "Sea of Faith") and the (more or less probingly) self-involved. As with many anthologies, the Table of Contents and Contributors' Notes make significant reading on their own. Forty percent of this year's contributors are women; at least 45% were born before the U.S. entered World War II; one could further break things down by race, class or region, and find the collection thoughtfully put together. But Bly's test for best-ness, he notes in his preface, was "heat" ("heat of friendship"; "heat of form"; "heat of the blues"; etc.), which excludes, for example, Language-oriented writing, because "those poets work very hard to drain all the meaning out of the words they use." No matter how well-constructed or demographically correct the poems included may be, these empty categories and dismissals don't justify the bland, predictable self-affirmation Bly's choices finally reflect. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Apollonian virtues?elegance, measure, constancy?abound in Hollander's 75 selections from last year's magazine verse. Like Harold Bloom, editor of The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997 (LJ 4/1/98), Hollander also eschews, if more politely, the alleged excesses of postmodernism, and his exhibits offer evidence that the old prosodic practices of rhyme, pentameter, sonnet, and sestina are very much alive in the hands of both new (Craig Arnold) and familiar (Hecht, Walcott, Justice) practitioners. But while the technical skills displayed in individual pieces may inspire admiration, the collective tenor of this volume seems overly sedate, solemn, and, well, fussy. Long, static meditations alternate with shorter, scenic ones, and the sparing humor is usually of a droll sort. True, no single volume in this often exciting annual series has quite represented the full stylistic spectrum of American poetry, but Hollander's choice implies a partisanship as narrow (if oppositely so) as Adrienne Rich's controversial 1996 selection. Still, for readers who feel besieged by inscrutable poetic experiments, this installment will be a zephyr from Parnassus.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; Original edition (September 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684860031
• ISBN-13: 978-0684860039
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars best and not so best poetry, April 22, 2000

By 

choiceweb0pen0 (Lafayette, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 1999 (Paperback)

If you like Robert Bly, then you won't mind that he has chosen poems much like his style. If prose poems drive you to commit violent acts, then you should avoid most of this book. There is a variety of poems in quality, varying from trite, to excellent. It is a good starting place if you want to find new poets to read, but the poems represented may not be their best poetry.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "safe", July 28, 2000

By 

Zane Ivy (Seoul) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 1999 (Paperback)

I always enjoy reading volumes in this series. I even enjoyed reading Bloom's anthology, though I am fiery trajectory away from his strange reactionary stancecademic approach...

THIS volume, is subtle, a pleasant read...but alas, "safe." With some notable exceptions which I will not explicitly note here...the poems are warm milk before bed time, with a slightly pleasing taste of the fragrance of grass of this particular field, that particular pasture.

Safe is nice...and of course has a certain beauty.... With an anthology like those in this series however, I'd like a few showers of fish and frogs on my Spring morning walk...a few beautifully sharp briars scratching my shins...

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, May 3, 2000

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Gianmarco Manzione (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 1999 (Paperback)

This is simply the most superb installment in the series of Best American poetry anthologies. Robert Bly has chosen rich poems that are free of airs and stuffy language, cultivating the unmistakable flavor of American poetry. From newer names like the delightful Billy Collins to older legends such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Phil Levine and Robert Creely, The Best American Poetry of 1999 will have every reader finding something to love within its pages. All poetry lovers-particularly those who are tired of the so-called "language poets"-must give this book a try.