Customer Reviews

The Best American Poetry 2007 (The Best American Poetry)

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

 

 

It's generally accepted that this series is a political rather than a poetic one: The Best American Poems according to this series editor usually are 1 degree of poet separation from himself. Students, colleagues, former editors, wife, all aboard! That being said, this is not the worst of the series. McHugh choses pun over fun mostly, with poems that tend to sound like something rather than feel abound. "Tokens in the slot: / ka-shot, shot, shot." Too many poems from just NEW AMERICAN WRITING: if this series is to truly last it ought to cast a much wider and democratic net. There's lots more out there: a poet who relies on this series to tell them the news that stays news will be left out in the cold. Pinsky, Rivard, Matthea Harvey, Danielle Pafunda, MacGregor Card and Joe Wenderoth do some interesting things worth checking out. But most of these poems seem to be present if only to reward big poetic names for being big poetic names and for cheap gimmicks like using bad words for the sake of using bad words. As ever, poets will have to decide for themselves what makes these poems Best. The anthology mostly feels like dull coins being dropped into the Meghan O'Rourke poem quoted above. The peepshow reveals little that titillates. Too bad.

I've found many of the BAP series to be highly dissapointing. But it is hard to select a best of when it comes to poetry. It really depends on what you like to read. Now, there are some truly awful poems in here, and I'm not sure McHugh was the best choice as an editor, but she really picked some great poems. Sure about a quarter of them are awful, but most are readable or good. And then there are the great ones: Geffrey Brock, Galway Kinnell, Marya Rosenberg, David Shumate, Brian Turner, Charles Harper Webb and Joe Wenderoth. If you love poetry, you've gotta get this one.

It is impossible to imagine that this collection of dreck represents the best of 2007 (or any year in the last ten). In fact, as I was reading I kept thinking that these poems might be just the opposite of the best poems of the year. Not the worst, exactly, but certainly the least significant. It was as if Heather McHugh chose the year's most underachieved poems as some sort of existential joke. And the joke is on those of us who actually went out and bought this book.

There are the "usual suspects" here, those poets who appear in nearly all anthologies like this, year after year. Some of them deserve to be anthologized, but going on what's collected here, clearly these men and women have done MUCH better elsewhere. I couldn't shake the impression that what Heather McHugh really did was to call up her friends and asked them what they thought their best poems of the year were and then published them here. Mostly these poems are shallow and what depth there is to them is filled with narcissistic treacle.

It's also just as likely that there AREN'T any good poems being written anymore, now that MFA programs rule the world. Just about anybody can write a poem that exhibits some skill and get it published. Hall, Hass, Pinsky . . . these guys toss off poems the way other people spit. And who cares? What these guys have had to say that was important they said a long time ago. They're here because they are Names. And has Marvin Bell EVER taken poetry seriously? (I know he takes himself and his career VERY seriously.) These poems are also very short and it's clear that Heather McHugh hasn't met a long poem that she's ever liked. Also what is astonishing in this book is the length of the contributor's notes. The notes are actually designed to help us understand the poignancy of the "creative moment" that brought their precious child into existence, and often the exegesis is longer than the poem. Certainly in some cases, their explanations pass for holy writ (perhaps to help future graduate students at Iowa City in 2117 understand them better).

These are poems really are nothing more than jokes, asides, flirtations, burps, sneezes, knock-offs and yawns--all glazed over with the rich patina of assured immortality. These people are SO in love with their own words. Unfortunately, they've all got wonderful teaching jobs and continue to influence generations of younger poets who will grow up to write the same drivel. We are a civilization in decline. We can't write any more good music, we can't make any more good movies, and our poetry sucks. (Except for Albert Goldbarth, the only truly great poet represented here.) Pretend this book is kryptonite and fly away somewhere else.

To Heather McHugh's credit, she's up front in her introduction about what criteria and biases she brings to her selections of the "best" in American Poetry. But that doesn't save the collection from being eminently disappointing. As many others have noted, this is a series of poems that play with sounds (I know, that sounds redundant)--but then it's not much more than that. The formula seems to be: 1) sing some sounds to yourself; 2) when they take the shape of words, write them down; 3) make big margins; 4) publish poem in BAP 2007. ("I met the Duck and Duckess of Windsor," Frederick Seidel writes in a typical line from the book.) Some of this is quirky and fun, but after a while it grows tedious and even makes you wonder how original any of this material is if it all sounds so much the same. Each year's collection requires an entire reading to find the gems, but this edition requires much more work than usual. Ultimately it's worth it--there's three or four poems that will please you--but the series editors really need to be more responsible about what they call the book. Granted we will never solve the formula for "best," but "Poems Heather Likes" would be much more accurate.

I assisted a stoneworker once in the construction of a foundation. From a large pile of stones he was adept at quickly finding those which the wall required, the shape of substance equal to the shape of absence, soon filled. He said it was largely a matter of having scanned the available material and letting his unconscious mind direct him to a conscious, and mostly correct, choice. Of course, in using language, we do something similar, swiftly rummaging through the word hoard for the thing we wish to say, hoping it will be solid, and something to build on. Heather McHugh delves into the matter itself, its interstices, gaps, and echoes, and into the material of what we mean, and are often unconscious of. The effect can be disquieting, calling the solid into question, shaking the foundation. Attention and alertness are required to read her work, and they are also the reward. The fort in comfort falls, and sometimes, in the landscape that was blocked, the delight of uncertainty and insecurity is revealed, if we are willing to stand it.
So I think McHugh selected poems for the Best American Poetry 2007 with something like this in mind. Are all of them best, or even better? Probably not. Some require more unraveling than I have patience for, some are indulgent, others seek to dazzle but tend to dizzy. That said, I have found the best way to read the book is here and there, now and then, to let accidents have their way with me. "Only surfaces interest me," writes Amit Majmudar in one of my favorite poems. "What depths I sound I sound by accident". But accidents, I think McHugh would agree, and the apparently random, favor the awakened mind.

I don't need to say anything else. Wish I could get my money and time back.

There are a few poems in this book that are worth reading-- Milton Kessler's "Comma of God," for example-- but most of them are forgettable or nauseating. Some of the poems are so irritating or inept (or both) that you'll want to shove the book into the shredder. More irritating than the poems, though, is the section that contains the contributors' comments. Here's a sample by Thomas Fink: "By entertaining varied perspectives on interpersonal and intergroup conflict and by disrupting continuity between successive sentences, 'Yinglish Strophes IX,' I hope, foregrounds heterogeneous linguistic elements rather than an individual 'voiceprint.'"

If that's your thing, go buy this book.

I was incredibly disappointed in this work. The selection of poems as "best" in America in 2007 was stunning in its mediocrity, and even outright poverty. If these are truly the best poems in America, we really are in trouble. I have never written a review before but this terrible book just made me want to cry out in protest.

Yes, I think The American Poetry Review is a great publication, but to include five of its poems in this book is ridiculous considering how many other fine publications are out there. I could have also made the same remark about the number of poems selected from Sentence or POOL. She also includes two poems from the same author twice! Now I'm certain there are so many talented poets out there, that she didn't need to resort to this. It must be a great honor to edit this publication and if her heart wasn't in it, she should have passed it along to someone who would actually work hard to read as many poems from as many authors in as many publications as possible.

In her selection of poems Heather McHugh clearly emphasizes sparkling language. However, this volume--and the series--are an enjoyable and convenient way to read a range of contemporary American poetry. I liked the biographical sketches at the back.