The Best American Poetry series

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The Best American Poetry series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.

The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the general editor of the series, each year contributes a foreword focusing on the state of contemporary poetry, and each year the edition's guest editor also contributes an introduction. The book titles in the series always follow the format of the first, changing only the year: for instance, "The Best American Poetry 1988".

According the Academy of American Poets Web site, "Best American Poetry remains one of the most popular and best-selling poetry books published each year and the series continues to provide a bird's-eye view of the breadth of American poetry."^[1]

A compendium for the first decade of the series has also been published, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, guest-edited by literary critic Harold Bloom, who selected what he regarded as the seventy-five best poems from the previous ten anthologies.

Contents 1 Guest editors 2 Rules and process 3 Sources of Poems 4 Advisors and assistants 5 Critical reception of the series 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Guest editors

The guest editors of the series, by year:

2007: Heather McHugh 2006: Billy Collins † 2005: Paul Muldoon 2004: Lyn Hejinian 2003: Yusef Komunyakaa 2002: Robert Creeley 2001: Robert Hass †

2000: Rita Dove 1999: Robert Bly 1998: John Hollander Best of the Best: '88-'97: Harold Bloom 1997: James Tate 1996: Adrienne Rich 1995: Richard Howard

1994: A. R. Ammons 1993: Louise Glück † 1992: Charles Simic † 1991: Mark Strand † 1990: Jorie Graham 1989: Donald Hall † 1988: John Ashbery

† editors who (as of 2007) have also been U.S. poets laureate

[edit] Rules and process

In his 1988 foreword to the first edition of the series, Lehman laid out the following rules:

• Lehman would select a poet each year to serve as guest editor;
• Each year's guest editor would make the final selection of poems;
• Each year's anthology would have poems from the previous calendar year (the 1988 anthology, for instance, would include only poems published in 1987);
• There would be fifty to seventy-five poems in each annual anthology (in fact, there have always been 75 poems);
• The guest editor could select as many as three poems by an individual poet;
• Poets would be asked to submit brief biographical information and, at their option, given the opportunity to write a bit about the poem chosen ("its form or its occasion or the method of composition or any other feature worth remarking on");
• The poems could come from magazines, including large-circulation periodicals and small presses, and in rare instances from books by individual poets;
• For poems that had first appeared more than a year in the past but which had been reprinted in a magazine during the previous calendar year, Lehman decided to have no rule ("To such questions, the anthologist's ever-ready response is: you just play it by ear");
• Foreign poets residing in the United States, "especially in cases where the poet has come to seem a vital presence in a particular American community", would be eligible to appear, and so John Ash, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott all made it into the 1988 edition.

Lehman also wrote that he had set some tasks for himself as series editor:

• To maintain continuity from year to year;
• to enforce "such rules as there are";
• to assist the guest editor, in particular by helping find poetry for the guest editor to look over;
• to pick the guest editor.

John Ashbery selected a poem by the series editor for inclusion in the innaugural volume of The Best American Poetry. In his introduction to the 1989 volume, Donald Hall noted that, "The series editor declined to be included." ^[2] The series editor's own poems have not appeared in subsequent volumes.

In Lehman's foreword to the 1992 book, he noted that translations are ineligible.^[3]

[edit] Sources of Poems

As of 2007, the following literary journals, magazines, and periodicals have published poems that have been chosen for inclusion in The Best American Poetry:

The New Yorker Poetry Collection The American Poetry Review The Paris Review Ploughshares Yale Review New American Writing The Atlantic Monthly New Republic Boulevard The Kenyon Review New England Review The Threepenny Review The Gettysburg Review Grand Street The Iowa Review Michigan Quarterly Review TriQuarterly Boston Review Colorado Review Callaloo Hanging Loose The Southern Review Verse Western Humanities Review AGNI Antaeus Barrow Street Denver Quarterly Hambone Shenandoah Southwest Review Antioch Review Conjunctions Field The New Criterion Partisan Review Beloit Poetry Journal Five Points Hudson Review The New York Review of Books Sulfur Georgia Review New Letters SHINY ACM Epoch O.blek Seneca Review Green Mountains Review Ontario Review POOL The World The Virginia Quarterly Review Chicago Review Cincinnati Review Crab Orchard Review Exquisite Corpse Fence jubilat No Tin House The Alaska Quarterly Review American Letters and Commentary Chelsea Crazyhorse Fine Madness Harvard Review Many Mountains Moving Pleiades Prairie Schooner Sentence Witness 88 Black Warrior Review Connecticut Review Cream City Review LIT Mississippi Review Mudfish Nation North American Review Ohio Review Pequod Poetry New York Raritan River Styx Skanky Possum The Hat Urbanus ZYZZYVA

Aerial American Poet BOMB Boston Phoenix Columbia Poetry Review Conduit Facture Gulf Coast Indiana Review LUNA Margie Massachusetts Review Meridien No Roses Review Quarterly West Salmagundi Temblor Third Coast Tyuonyi 32 Poems American Voice Atlanta Review Blue Sofa Boston Book Review Brooklyn Review Café Review Can We Have Our Ball Back? Court Green CROWD DCPoetry Anthology 2003 Double Take Extracts from Pelican Bay Fulcrum Gargoyle Harvard Magazine Hotel Amerika In Time Journal Kiosk London Review of Books Lyric Manoa Mid-American Review New York Quarterly The New York Times Northwest Review Notre Dame Review Open City Painted Bride Quarterly Parnassus PMS Poet Lore Poetry Flash Poetry Northwest Princeton University Library Chronicle Progressive Provincetown Arts Rattapallax Rattle Rhino River City Santa Monica Review Sewanee Review Sewanee Theological Review Slate Solo Subtropics The Canary Tikkun The Times Literary Supplement Volt Xconnect 26 3rd Bed Acorn Alkali Flats American Scholar Americas Review Antennae apex of M Arshile Ascent Aufgabe Avec B City Bitter Oleander Blasts! Bombay Gin Bookforum Boondoggle Bridge Brilliant Corners

Broadway Chain Clockwatch Review Common Ground Common Sense Cortland Review Croonenbergh's Fly Crux Deluxe Rubber Chicken Disbelief Drum Voices Review Ecopoetics Ecotone Empathy Endicott Review Evansville Review Failbetter Farmer's Market Faucheuse Figdust Formalist Fourteen Hills Free Lunch Gastronomica Germ Glass Technology Harper's Magazine Hayden's Ferry Review Heavy Daughter Blues Hotel Lautreamont How(ever) Image In Posse Review Insurance Magazine Iodine Poetry Review Jacket Journal of Family Life Kalliope La Petite Zine Lingo Literal Latte Literary Imagination Longhouse Los Angeles Review Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern MiPoesias Mungo vs. Ranger Nebraska Review New Millennium Writings Nightsun Nimrod Occident OnTheBus ’Pataphysics Patterson Literary Review Pharos Phoebe Poetry East Poetry Project Newsletter Potomac Review Pressed Wafer Prose Poem Quarter After Eight Rapidfeed Rapture Rosebud Ruins Sacramento News & Review Sal Mimeo Salt Salt Hill Shankpainter Sites Slope Sonora Review Spinning Jenny Spoon River Poetry Review Spoon River Quarterly Stud Duck Sun Sycamore Review Talisman Tampa Review Tar River Poetry Tarpaulin Sky The Texas Observer Texas Review The Butcher Shop The Progressive the tiny Tor House Newsletter Van Gogh's Ear Vocabula Review Volcano Inside Washington Post Magazine Waterstone Webber Studies Willow Springs

[edit] Advisors and assistants

As of 2007, the following 34 individuals have been thanked for their advice and assistance (in the Acknowledgments of individual editions) by series editor David Lehman :

John Ashbery Angela Ball Mark Bibbins J.D. Bullard C.A. Carlson Prathima Christadas Shanna Compton James Cummins Peter Davis John Diamond-Nigh Amy Donow Denise Duhamel

Steve Dube Jennifer Factor Kate Fox-Reynolds Beth Gylys Kim Gek Lin Harrison (Kim Gek Lin Short) Stacey Harwood Susan Hutton Martha Kinney Christine Korfhage Deborah Landau Rebecca Livingston Maggie Nelson

Kelly Nichols Kathy Ossip Danielle Pafunda Karl Parker Liam Rector Sarah Ruth Jacobs Carly Sachs John Schertzer Michael Schiavo Susan Wheeler

Of these 34 advisors and assistants to the series, 13 have had poems selected for inclusion in the anthology. In total, 40 poems by advisors and assistants to the series have appeared in its volumes.^[4]

[edit] Critical reception of the series

According to the Academy of American Poets Web site, "[t]he Best American Poetry series has become one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world." The Academy Web site called the introductions to the collection by the guest editors, as well as Lehman's "state-of-poetry" forewords, "indespensible." As a whole, the anthologies "seem to capture the zeitgeist of the current attitudes in American poetry."^[1]

However, the Academy article also noted that the series and its editors are "often criticized for their selections and assessments (common complaints include the exclusion of experimental poets, lack of diversity, and allegiance to poetry's "old guard") [...]"^[1]

The anthology has on occasion faced allegations of cronyism. For instance, the 1998 edition of Best American Poetry reprinted "The Difference Between Pepsi and Pope" by Denise Duhamel, a Lehman assistant who, in the poem, referred to a piece by Lehman himself ("The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke"). Briggs Seekins, formerly the poetry editor of Salt Hill, the journal where the poem first appeared, said Duhamel's poem was not even the best work Duhamel had published in that same issue of Salt Hill, let alone one of the best poems published in America that year: "I remember when [Salt Hill founding editor] Michael [Paul Thomas] showed us the poem, I commented, "Hey, this is sure to get picked up by Best American." Naturally I was joking. Surely a poem praising David Lehman could not possibly get picked to appear in an anthology where David Lehman was the series editor...[w]e published another poem in the very same issue by Duhamel that was just as good, maybe even better, and it didn't heap any praise at all upon David Lehman. But damned if the one praising David Lehman was not picked up for the big showcase."^[5]

In 2006, Paul Muldoon selected Stacey Harwood, the wife of series editor Lehman ^[6], for inclusion. Spouses of guest editors have also been selected for the series. In 1989, Donald Hall selected a poem by his wife Jane Kenyon^[7]; in 1990, Jorie Graham selected a poem by her then-husband James Galvin^[8]; in 2001, Robert Hass selected a poem by his wife Brenda Hillman ^[9].

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• [12] Best American Poetry series Web site

v • d • e The Best American Poetry series 1988 • 1989 • 1990 • 1991 • 1992 •1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • Best of the Best: 88-97 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000 • 2001 • 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006;• 2007