The Best American Poetry 2008: Series Editor David Lehman, Guest Editor Charles Wright [Paperback]

Charles Wright (Editor), David Lehman (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2008 | Series: Best American Poetry

The Best American Poetry series is a beloved mainstay of American poetry. This year's edition was edited by one of the most admired and acclaimed poets of his generation, Charles Wright. Known for his meditative and beautiful observations of landscape, change, and time,Wright brings his particular sensibility to this year's anthology, which contains an ecumenical slant that is unprecedented for the series. He has gathered an astonishing selection of work that includes new poems by Carolyn Forché, Jorie Graham, Louise Glück, Frank Bidart, Frederick Seidel, Patti Smith, and Kevin Young and showcases a dazzling array of rising stars like Joshua Beckman, Erica Dawson, and Alex Lemon.

With captivating and revelatory notes from the poets on their works and sage and erudite introductory essays by Wright and series editor David Lehman, The Best American Poetry 2008 will be read, discussed, debated, and prized for years to come.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his bullet-pointed introduction to this year's volume in this popular annual anthology series, prolific Pulitzer winner Wright makes it known that he is interested in emotional intensity, and its capacity to give poems shape and beauty, more than in any particular aesthetic camp: "cleverness is not what endures. Only pain endures. And the rhythm of pain." Poems here might be called confessional, hip, avant-garde, edgy and conservative. Powerful if hairy poems by Marvin Bell, Alex Lemon and D. Nurkse are good examples of the range of what Wright likes, as is Rae Armantrout's stark and hurting elegy for Robert Creeley: "The present is cupped// by a small effort/ of focus--// its muscular surround.// You're left out." Many of the usual suspects--Ashbery, Glück, Merwin, Graham, Charles Simic--are represented by strong poems. Also here are representatives of the generation now entering mid-career, like D.A. Powell, Natasha Trethewey and Kevin Young. Some of the most exciting poems come from writers whose stars are still rising, such as an extraordinary meditation on love by Mary Szybist: "The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love/ Only through miracle,/ But the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through,/ How to make themselves shrines to their own longing." (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Pulitzer Prize winner Wright is on the hook as guest editor for the latest edition of this essential annual, and he asks, basically, what and who makes a “Best American Poet”? The poets he selected represent quality and diversity. Among the well-known contributors are Marvin Bell: “I awoke and was dead, so I decided to take my own life, and ended up / alive after my self-inflicted demise”; and his former colleague at Iowa, Jorie Graham: “. . . looking up, the sky makes you hear it, you know why we have come it / blues, you know the trouble at the heart, blue, blue . . .” Equally up to the task are newcomers Joshua Beckman and Erica Dawson, who writes, “The later it gets, the more the sky will grow / In a strange reversal. Immaterial.” This is a fun, varied, and generous collection of poems by 75 poets at various stages in their writing lives, all of whom will inspire a wide spectrum of poetry lovers. --Mark Eleveld --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743299752
• ISBN-13: 978-0743299756
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars " 'they sound like sculptors sanding away at the monolith' ", December 1, 2008

By 

K. M. "literary devotee" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 2008: Series Editor David Lehman, Guest Editor Charles Wright (Paperback)

The Best American Poetry 2008: Series Editor David Lehman, Guest Editor Charles Wright (Best American Poetry) collects works of over seventy poets, in alphabetical order from Tom Andrews to Kevin Young. Tim Ross'a phrase about "sculptors sanding away at the monolith" is a pretty good way to characterize the verse, mostly free, in these pages. The volume is nearly all solemnity and heft. To suggest that Erica Dawson's "Go on, and gag on your own gravity--" sums up the selection nicely would be very wrong however. The prevailing gravitas feels right in our sober, unsettled and even eerie post-9/11 world.

Some of my favorties in this collection are: "Evening Song," by Tom Andrews, "Wanting Sumptuous Heavens," by Robert Bly, "Rock Polisher," by Chris Forhan, "Threshing," by Louise Glueck, "Snoring," by Mark Jarman, "Resignation," by J. D. McClatchy, "World News," by Sharod Santos, "Hexagon: On Truth," by Dave Snyder, "Thomas Hardy," by Lee Upton, and "No Forgiveness Ode," by Dean Young.

David Young's "The Dead from Iraq," begins, "They come back and stand in our midst." He calls them "vague sentinals, stiff at attention." These poems also stand in the readers' midst and seem to form a more ragged phantom line in the mind, challenging and chastisizing.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writers Unite, October 3, 2008

By 

J. Wahlgren "j paris" (boston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 2008: Series Editor David Lehman, Guest Editor Charles Wright (Paperback)

This year the job was done very well. The works were pulled from unique sources regardless of the place (a theological review & the New York Review of Books etc.) & the writers were focused upon. John Ashbery is in this year's work as well as the entire Dark Room Collective. I saw Kevin Young's poem appear in Poetry & knew this would be included. They did a good crunch time job of uniting all the sources & strongest writers of our generation to pull together the best work. Kudos to Lehman & Wright.

Just a note: This is my third year buying the collection & it's the best I've seen, Gluck, Trethewey, Young, everyone basically.

I thought 2006 was dominated by Kay Ryan's poem.
I thought 2007 was focused upon "sounds" as opposed to word choice.

& this years collection is focused upon voice.

4.0 out of 5 stars Vintage, December 6, 2011

By 

Simon G. Barrett (london, england) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 2008: Series Editor David Lehman, Guest Editor Charles Wright (Paperback)

Either Charles Wright has a nose for sniffing out pretension or it was a very grounded year. There are poems here I appreciate by big names (ie oldsters), which ain't always the case - Ashbery, Marvin Bell, Frank Bidart; Hass, Hoagland, even (help!) a Hicok and a Bernstein I like (I've been trashing their recent books). There are the slightly-below-the radar mid-rankers - hello, Lydia Davis! And then there are the spanking new names, which it would be invidious to start rattling off - good luck to 'em all