The Best American Poetry 2002 [Paperback]

Robert Creeley (Author), David Lehman (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Best American Poetry | Publication Date: September 3, 2002

Since its inception in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has achieved brand-name status in the literary world as the preeminent showcase of each year's most important contributions to American poetry. This year's exceptional volume, edited by Robert Creeley, a figure revered across teh wide spectrum of American poetry, features a diverse mix of established masters, rising stars and the leading lights of a younger generation. The pleasure of the poems selected here, Creeley explains in his introduction, is "that they caught my fancy, some almost outrageously, some by their quiet, nearly diffident manner, some by unexpected turns of thought or insight, others by a confident authority and intent." With comments from the poets elucidating their work, a thought-provoking introduction from Creeley, and Lehman's always popular foreword assessing the current state of poetry, The Best American Poetry 2002 will prove as irresistible to new readers as it is indispensable for poetry fans everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This installment of the venerable series is refreshing for what it isn't: a compendium of September 11 poems. In fact, Creeley, selected by series editor David Lehman to sit in the revolving editor's chair, makes no mention of 9/11 in his six-page introduction, while Lehman's own seven-page performance is split between a paean to poet laureate Billy Collins and a discussion of September 11's poetic effects, with one paragraph devoted to the choice of Creeley. Yet Creeley's own choice of poems is balanced and satisfying, providing space for contemplation, while opening a rare window on dissent. Along with fine poems from John Ashbery, Frank Bidart, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, Sharon Olds, Carl Phillips and Charles Wright, we get Amiri Baraka's "The Golgotha Local" ("But if you understood, the entire question, the pause, the certain ugliness/ Of what you see, if between they legs you got to look, if you is ruled by thief and/ crook. If you is more than what you be..."), a powerful Alice Notley elegy, Benjamin Friedlander's "Independence Day" ("Let freedom bling/ Bling, Shaq. Like/ A dripping popsicle torn in half"), Steve Malmude's "Perfect Front Door" and Mong-Lan's epic "Trail": "what is the remedy for momentum for mania for a deciduous heart?" These and many other poems here will challenge readers to find their own remedies.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Robert Haas, guest editor of The Best American Poetry, 2001, apologized for not choosing more witty poems, which he thought series editor Lehman preferred. No apologies needed this year. Guest editor Creeley has chosen lots of witty poems, perhaps too many. Wit in this context doesn't necessarily mean funny; sharp, intelligent, and challenging are the qualities of wit more pertinent here. Jenny Boully's "'The Body'" is nothing if not witty, though some may conclude that, because it consists of footnotes at the bottoms of otherwise blank pages, it isn't much of a poem (at least, it is often funny). Challenges fairly bristle here, and some are worth puzzling out, with or without reading the poets' comments at the back of the book. Well, Creeley has always appreciated high modernism, and broadly enough that more immediately readable, poemlike poems also appear here: the late Ronald Johnson's untitled, six-line summary of human life; Louise Gluck's convincing representation of a happy "Reunion"; and, above all, Frank Bidart's timely "Injunction." Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; Original edition (September 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743203860
• ISBN-13: 978-0743203869
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #905,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, quirky selection, September 9, 2002

By 

Matthew Cheney (New Hampton, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 2002 (Paperback)

The Best American Poetry series can never live up to its title (just about every editor has said in their introduction, "These may not really be your idea of 'the best' -- they're just the poems I most liked this year"), but by having different editors each year, the books offer an interesting view of what eminent poets consider work of note.

For me, the books work best when the editor is someone with a specific and, most likely, controversial vision -- a person who isn't afraid of manifestos and subjectivity. Thus, up until now, my favorite volume in the series was the 1996 edition edited by Adrienne Rich -- not because I think all of the poems she chose were brilliant (many weren't), but rather because the choices were unpredictable and, though diverse, held together by a clear philosophical intent on the editor's part. (It was exactly this philosophical intent which made the book the most controversial one in the series, with Harold Bloom deliberately excluding any of Rich's choices from the ten-year retrospective volume.)

Robert Creeley's volume seems even better to me than Rich's (partly because I like Creeley's view of poetry more than Rich's). I expect, though, that the book will either be loved or hated by readers, for though there are some old favorites such as Donald Hall and Sharon Olds included, the majority of the poems are innovative and "difficult".

Approached with an open mind, a high tolerance for ambiguity and confusion, and a certain sense of humor, though, and this book reveals itself to be full of wonders. I couldn't tell you what the exact meaning of Forrest Gander's magnificent "Carried Across" is, but I can say that reading it was one of the most powerful and rewarding experiences I've had while reading contemporary poetry. None of the other poems had quite the same effect on me, but why should they? Jenny Boully's footnotes-to-blank-space "The Body" had me laughing and thinking and wondering and rethinking as I wandered through it, a bit lost but also amused, and many other poems had similar effects.

Frank O'Hara maintained that poetry should at least be as interesting as movies, and, with the proper willingness on the reader's part to stay open to oddity, just about all of these poems meet that test.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars disappointment, December 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 2002 (Paperback)

I've read this series regularly, and I've also often chosen to use it in my college courses, though in the last five years or so, I've found it less useful as a teaching tool and more useful as a compendium of trendiness in American Poetry. The last really comprehensive "Best" in this series was Richard Howard's year, but then, Howard is really an editor, a writer and reader with broad tastes, and secure enough in his own achievements that he doesn't submit to the kind of cronyism that afflicts this year's anthology. Creeley's choices are so very dull that I fear these must be buddies. I'm going to have to find another anthology for my students. This one has been disappointing too many years in a row.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No More Creely, March 3, 2003

By 

J. E. Dowdle "Blue Sky" (Snow Camp, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 2002 (Hardcover)

This has been a wonderful series of books, a great way to keep abreast of where current American poetry is going - and I'm sure it will be again. Unfortunatley this edition doesn't measure up. The reason for this failure falls at the feet of the editor, Robert Creely. I understand an editor's desire to place his own stamp on such a work. Furthermore, if that weren't the idea behind the series, it wouldn't have a new editor ever year. That said, I have to say that Creely put far too much of his own mark on this year's edition. Unless you happen to really enjoy Creely's own poetry, you probably will not enjoy this book. It reads like a collection of his own work. About every tenth poem I feel like I have a clue what the author is trying to say. All the rest amount to little more than gratuitous verbal fireworks, pointless word plays, excessive alliteration, and general self-absorbed drivel. In the future I hope series editors will try to bring us once again a broad collection of what is great in current American poetry, not simply one marginal poet's collection of the poems he happened to like that year.