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Best New Poets 2008: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers

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BEST NEW POETS 2008 and THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2008 arrived here the same day. I read the latter every year, but surprisingly, the work in BEST NEW POETS 2008 seems superior. Spent a week in pleasure opening this book at random. Too many outstandingly good self-assured poems to name but I laughed out loud at Steve Kistulentz (whose poem's title cannot be reproduced here) and got good chills from Lisa McCullough's "The Boar Roast", a stunning narrative achievement and especially remarkable for a poet prior to her first collection. This book bodes well for American poetry. Thank you Mark Strand, editor, and Jeb Livingood series editor. (check out his bestnewpoets. org) Haven't liked a collection this much from the get-go since Donald Hall's CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY forty years ago. Earlier titles in the series -- 2005, 2006 and 2007 -- are still available and I for one am ordering all three.

I edit a small poetry journal, so I read a lot of new work. I found this book to be a great sampling of the best that is currently being written/published. To be eligible, a poet could not have published a full-length book. Poems were selected by taking nominations from journals and writing programs, and from poets who entered their own work. These poems were then culled to find the stongest fifty poems. I was delighted to see that many submitted by the poets themselves were selected. My particular favorite (nominated by University of Houston)is "Adorable Siren, Do You Love the Damned?" by Anna Journey. Fantastic.

This may be the best dollar I ever spent (tho' I suppose if you factor in the airfare it's not so hot). 'New' means unpublished in book form (chapbooks are OK), one poem per person, so as Livingood says they have to be pretty accessible, and two thirds of the way in I can report a 50% success rate - staggeringly high for a poetry book; that's 50% that go 'ding!' and hardly any that fail to connect *at all*. It would be invidious to mention favourites but the Sleepy's saga of Charlotte (Savidge), Jack, Scott and the mattress showroom is pretty affecting. As for the cool, appraising, come-hither-me-not chick on the cover, she may not be an 'emerging writer', but anything to keep poetry sexy!

comparing this edition with australian editions of a similar type-- i was underwhelmed by most of the contributions----a sense of listlessness was my end reaction--the exceptions stand out but how would they fare in a better book??????

and not a word from mark strand----the usa badge of approval as far as poetry goes--not one word except for his first and last name on the cover--is this deliberate or incident?????

certainly it might be interpreted as the editor/poet had left the building-----