Customer Reviews

The Best American Poetry 2000

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

 

 

Picking the best involves making bets, and one reason I like this series is the willingness of the editors to make big wagers. This year's volume gives me plenty to like -- including poets I'd not previously encountered (like Linh Dinh, Christopher Edgar, Olena Kalytiak Davis) as well as familiar names (Ammons, Merwin, Wilbur). Any book that can span the gamut from radically chic Michael Palmer on one end to prim Mary Jo Salter on the other is a perfect paradigm of psotmodern values. (Did I really write that?)The concluding section in the book, where the editors of the series going back to John Ashbery pick their favorite poems of the 20th century, is not only fun, it performs an important service in directing attention to great poems easily overlooked. As always I look forward with huge interest to next year's volume. This anthology quickens the appetite for more, always more.

First, to answer the reviewer below as to why no Ashbery, no Ruth Stone: Ashbery has been braindead for years and Ruth Stone is minor, minor, minor, in ambition and in achievement. Not to say that others here won't prove to be minor too, but Dove's anthology is the most stylistically diverse yet(Howard's came close) and its real strength is that instead of including the usual stuff from the usual suspects, she made the effort to find young/emerging poets whose work, taken poem by individual poem, is as interesting if not more so. For example, Olena Kalytiak Davis' poem and Linh Dinh's poem are terrific. No disrespect to the man who revolutionized American poetry--respect, indeed, to the body of his work--but why include rehashed and weaker versions of what he used to write when you can include fresh voices full of energy, pointing forward? Sure, there are plenty of lame poems here, but fewer than usual, and Dove's anthology also feels hugely honest and energetic: she didn't settle for the same old same old but also didn't grind a silly axe. She found what she liked and what she likes is wonderfully wide-ranging. Thanks, Rita!

I'll admit a bias: I was hoping to see a few of my favorite poets in this year's edition of the Best American Poetry, but was sadly disappointed. No Charles Simic, no Charles Wright, no John Ashbery. But what did make it in this year are certainly great:Mary Oliver's "Work," a long poem contemplating nature (her perennial interest), Susan Wood's "Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair," (the best of many elegies to the late Larry Levis) and Donald Justice's "Ralph: A Love Story." Dove has done an excellent job of including long and short poems alike, and has been fairly representative of the best poets writing and publishing today. Some editors seem to be political in their selections: Adrienne Rich chose none of the "big" names and John Hollander admittedly picked those that were long and/or formal. Another interesting feature of this year's edition is the lists of Best Poems of the Century. Past editors were asked to each give a list of what they felt were the fifteen best American poems of the last 100 years. The results were interesting, with a few editors declining to participate. My choice as best poem from that list: "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by John Ashbery.

The challenge of having a different distinguished editor each year is that the choices reflect an aesthetic and political bias. I welcomed this year's selections because Rita Dove made no apologies for her diverse list. Readers will like some and dislike some, but that's true for any anthology. I'm dismayed that people expect the same cluster of poets year-to-year; that would only happen if the editor didn't change. And that nonprogessive expectation also reflects the presumption that the same poets write memorable poems every single year of their careers--not so. Frankly, as Charles Simic proclaims, prolific poets are capable of bad poetry. I think Dove's has been the best collection so far because it gives us a taste of the big flavor that is contemporary American poetry. And let me be the first to congratulate her for not including many representatives of that stale vanguard, e.g. Ashbery.

This has to be the most underwhelming selection of The Best American Poetry (TBAP) to date. Word after word, it reads as a thoughtless selection of prose poems; even the free verse seems to have been only randomly broken into various line breaks. Not one challenge to form, structure, white-spaces between words, nor much thought in the linebreaks, and even the big name writers are represented by weak pieces. I read the book cover to cover, hoping to find something worth relishing, yet nothing in the poems inspired enjoyment. I really don't think the guest editor Rita Dove has much sophistication when it comes to poetry. As with her other accolades, Dove seems again to be an Affirmative Action recipient editor. This volume sucks!

David Lehman is one of the most facinating writers, poets, and editors that I have ever read. He is the author of The Daily Mirror, a wonderful and well penned selection of poems.

I believe his perspective and talent for finding the best poets lies in his experience. Mr.Lehman is a great editor and any reader who chooses to pick up and read this book will be thankful.

One can learn so much from the writers and makers of The Best American Poetry books. I also recommend, his most recent book, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets. I give all these books 5 stars!

Above is my proposed title for this series; as you can see, I am not a marketing genius. The series is called "Best of" because it needs to sell, and I am all for that if it gets a few more copies off the shelves. I would propose one more change other than the title, although related: replace the Contributors' Comments (though not the Notes) with comments by the editor. The "Best" anthologies are fun not just for the poems included, but also as a reflection the editors' taste. A paragraph or two explaining the merits of each poem and the reason for inclusion would not only create a small portrait of the editor, but would provide another way to consider the anthology as a whole. The Introduction is too short, and the poets' often banal comments about their own work add nothing to a form that should stand self-contained and alone.

Most of these "poems" read like they belong in The Best American Newspaper Columns with a few exceptions, some better than others. Lucille Clifton, Richard Wilbur, Robert Pinsky, Carl Phillips, Reginald Shepherd, Patricia Spears Jones and Brenda Hilman all deliver. Why Stallings' poem for a poem about Greek Mythology that simply ends flat with predictable end-rhymes? Why Perry's failed pantoum? The Addonizio piece was deficient in poetic device. There are a lot of near-misses in this volume too.

The cover claims "'A year's worth of the very best.' --People" . . . People Magazine?!?

Unfortunately, this series leaves me with more questions than answers. Has the state of American Poetry so declined that it is now impossible to compile a volume of the year's exceptional poetry? Is it the limited scope of magazines used to find the "best?" Or is it that one editor is incapable of finding the "best?"

William Feins

As the author of Blue Street, a new book of romantic poetry, I know how important it is to read other writers' work and absorb other styles. The Best American Poetry is a great collection of works and reading it helped define my style. I recommend it to anyone.

I couldn't help but notice the absence of many wonderful writers in this marginal collection. Where was John Ashbery? Where was Ruth Stone, who's collection won the Critics Book Circle Award this year? I was hoping to see some of my favorite poets in this book, but I suppose I will have to look elsewhere.