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

~ Charles Wright (Editor), David Lehman (Editor)

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743299752
• ISBN-13: 978-0743299756
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 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 (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #20,276 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth Your While, March 20, 2009

By	me - See all my reviews

If your only experience with this series is the unfortunate Best American Poetry 2007, then Best American Poetry 2008 might not be enough to persuade you of the value of this series or the worth of contemporary poetry. But I would urge you at least to give it a chance. In his introduction, editor Charles Wright refreshingly forewarns us that he likes "things to make sense" and that we shouldn't look for "language games, intellectual rip-offs, or rhetorical sing-alongs," all ideas that made me optimistic about the book's contents (and made me wonder if he was referring to the noted weakness of the 07 version). For the most part Wright stays true to his word, as a good number of these poems both please the ear and excite the mind. The clash of styles among the poems can be jarring--an inevitable flaw in any series of this nature--but that does not take away from the individual successes you find inside. Oddly the poems seem to be weakest in the middle (purely an accident of its alphabetical structure), when the unnecessary obscurity of so much contemporary poetry supplants the heartfelt intensity Wright seemed to be seeking. Everyone will have their favorites, of course, which is why I would recommend you take a look at the book--it won't please everyone, but everyone should be able to find something pleasing somewhere inside.

11 of 18 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 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.