The Best American Poetry 2023

by David Lehman, Elaine Equi

Award-winning poet Elaine Equi selects the poems for the 2023 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).

Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents some of the year’s most striking and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering insight into their work.

For The Best American Poetry 2023 guest editor Elaine Equi, whose own work is “deft, delicate [and] subversive” (August Kleinzahler), has made astute choices representing contemporary poetry at its most dynamic. The result is an exceptionally coherent vision of American poetry today.

Including valuable introductory essays contributed by the series and guest editors, the 2023 volume is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, School, 21st Century, Literature, American

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 5, 2023

About the author

David Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.

Reviews

[Lizzie S · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I REALLY liked The Best American Poetry 2022. It was my first time reading the anthology and so many of the poems really stuck with me. For whatever reason, I just could not get as into the collection for 2023. The poetry felt a little bit more distant and academic and didn't make me ~feel~ as much. While I had a decent time reading these, I will definitely be less likely to pick up The Best American Poetry 2024.

Thanks so much to David Lehman, Elaine Equi, and Scribner for this ARC through NetGalley. The Best American Poetry 2023 will be available September 5th, 2023!

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. I did not like a lot of these poems.

[Henry Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read these anthologies every year when they come out, and it always comes down to whether or not I share taste with the year’s guest editor. Unfortunately, this year I didn’t. The poems here felt a bit more restrained or soft-spoken. That said, I did still find a number of outstanding pieces in this collection whose writers I’m excited to read more of!

My favorites were “from 13th Balloon” by Mark Bibbins, “The Years” by Alex Dimitrov, “After the Exhibition” by Stuart Dischell, “Hooky” by Ada Limón, “Dramaturgy” by Jason Schneiderman, and “I can see Mars” by Sarah Anne Wallen.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met a bunch of people
and they told me all of their thoughts.

I will hang with some of them again,
while others, I shall cross the room to avoid.

[S꩜phie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't think I had the same taste in poetry as this editor and that's ok!

[emma charlton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately my least favorite of this series so far. Not many standouts and even a few poems I disliked and would've skipped if not for reading this in ARC format. Always love to see new Ada Limon though! / thanks to NetGalley for the arc!

[Brittany Mishra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was unable to finish this anthology this year. The 2022 edition was wonderful and well edited. 2023 suffers from an editor that tried too hard to find difficult to understand poems. I connected with none of the poems in this collection.

[Juliet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Scribner and Goodreads for this review anthology. I have loved meeting so many new-to-me poets in this varied and relevant collection. Particularly liked Alex Dimitrov’s “The Years,” Herbert Gold’s “Other News on Page 24” and Michael Lilly’s “I Meant To.” Still reading!

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

First a thank you to Scribner for the copy of this book in the Goodreads Giveaways.

I like poetry. I love poetry. I read poetry. I write poetry. I have a poetry blog. I have some poems published, online and in print. So, it's not that I don't like poems. Some people don't, some people claim not to "get" poems. I do.

That said, if these are the "best" out there, or the "best" the editors could find, poetry in America is in big trouble.

Most were, sorry to be blunt, painful to read. In the case of many, if we wrote them out in sentences, they would read as prose. Often boring prose. Because there was nothing poetic about them. I read the bios of the authors, and their comments on their poems. Like their poems, such pretention, such try-hardiness.

I must question the decision to include the Auden. Auden died in 1973. The poem was written in the 1940s, but Auden never published it, or for that matter, even completed it. "Mary Jo Salter points out, "That he (Auden) didn't think the poem good enough to publish as is, is a measure of how high he set the bar..." 30 years he had to work on it, to bring it up to meet that bar, and he chose not to. What does that tell us? He DIDN'T WANT IT PUBLISHED! It isn't one of his best, then again, he didn't complete it.

A cento (the poet calls it a Wikipedia cento), where the "... sentences were cribbed from... Wikipedia. Really? The "best"?
As I Wandered Lonely in the Cloud - What the hell is this? According to the poet, a "...riff on one of Wordsworth's greatest hits."
The Shape of Biddle City wouldn't bother me so much if it was indeed a rectangle! "For example, this poem is a rectangle..." Maybe in the publication where it was originally published, but not here. There are two words hanging below the rectangle.
You would think I'd have a problem with Three Shrimp Boats on the Horizons, and while it's not my kind of poetry, if you read it aloud it has nice near rhymes, and reminds me of some raps lyrics! Oh, not the words themselves, the sounds and pauses, etc.

What did I like?

World's End, except that second line. Not sure why "hair."
The Years
While not my favorite, 330 College Avenue did touch me and bring tears to my eyes, thinking of my own mother and childhood home.
Some of Tablets VI.
Brown Furniture
Something I've Not Bought was clever, cute. I won't say I "liked" it so much as recognized the sentiment! I disliked any of the poems referencing Instagram, or AI, etc.
The second poem of Three Poems from 13 Moons Kora, "Junio con patio invierno."

I particularly liked just two.

Photo Shoot - I have an old photo (1930s-1940s) from a flea market of a "Negro man... fedora and a delightful smile" that could be the illustration for this poem. I love the first lines,
"The camera remembers,
leaves a stain of you that travels without you,
stays around long after you,..."
Other News on Page 24 - It helps to know the Marin headlands, and well know the eucalyptus groves in the entire Bay Area. Unfortunately, the last "...as I fly away" is too overused in writings when mentioning scattering cremains. I'm surprised the poet used that phrase. I have to take "favorite poem of the lot" away for that, and give it to Photo Shoot.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but I'll leave it here. I will reread those I like, and those I almost like, maybe those will grow on me. As it is, very disappointing choices for the 2023 edition of "The Best American Poetry."

[Ace Boggess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read through this volume twice already, and for the most part, love it. Elaine Equi has chosen a selection of poems that align perfectly with my personal taste. Most are short (one to two pages), and in fact the volume as a whole is the shortest, I think, since the tiny 2007 volume. It logs in at just 129 pages. The poems also lean more toward the accessible side, with only a few that stray to the experimental. Many come from smaller, online journals, including personal favorites South Florida Poetry Journal and Vox Populi. My only gripe with the volume, and what keeps it from its fifth star, is the inclusion of a poem from W.H. Auden, who's been dead almost as long as I've been alive. While it's a good poem, it doesn't belong in a volume of the year's best, possibly not even in a book called the Best Obscure, Overlooked Poems of the Distant Past (If anyone wants to hire me to compile THAT book, I'm open to it). All-in-all, though, having a beef with one poem doesn't detract much from the greatness of this year's anthology. It's a wonderful book, and a quick read. Definitely give it a shot.

[Tema · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐️

I’m trying to read more poetry but this book was kinda a let down. I liked a select few of the poems in this but overall not very interesting.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few gems here and there, and an overview of poetry today…

VINCENT KATZ
A Marvelous Sky
I don't need to buy any records but there is a record
store
I don't want to play chess but there are still chess shops
I don't really want to pay for anything right now
The sky is blue, the air is warm, and youth is the tenor
Most people are not excited by their lives
But there's something in the air that might give them a lift
The younger they are…

Suddenly music is in my ears again
Music reaches body brain and heart simultaneously
The ones one wants to reach are reached by music.


EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY

from The Feeling Sonnets

If Erato is the muse of poetry, who is the muse of music.
No muse is the muse of music. Any muse is the muse of music.
A muse is she musing about her meaning with music.
Take meaning away from musing and all that remains is music.
It is the music that makes for feeling and not the mean-ing.
Music is moving but meaning, merely amusing.

We do not mean meaning, we mean the feeling of meaning.
It is the feeling of moving and being moved. Therefore we mean to mean meaning but we mean music.
Music names names. We assume it has meaning.

It does not mean to. It means because it names but it does not mean it.
I feel my name being called in its omen, amen, and moan. You yours.
It may be the same omen, amen, and moan. The name is not the same.

Is there a ruse in the music. How does it choose us. We are all hearing
We are hearing. Hearing. We are not hearing. We are here.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously, the title announces an impossible task, but the collection does provide a decent sense of the state of its particular world. I picked it up because in thumbing the contents I noticed poems by several of the poets whose voices are on my "pay attention" list: Arthur Sze, Yusef Komunyakaa, Diane Seuss, Terrance Hayes, John Keene, Will Alexander. For the most part, their poems were the ones that struck me most forecefully as I read, particularly Sze's Wildfire Season, Keene's Straight No Chaser, and the excert from Komunyakaa's ongoing Autobiography of My Alter Ego. But I was happy to find work by poets whose work I didn't know but will pay attention to moving ahead: Amy Gerstler (Night Herons), J. Estanislao Lopez (the delightful Places with Terrible Wi-Fi), Stephen Paul Miller (Dating Buddha), Tim Seibles (All the Time Blues Villanelle), and Elizabeth Willis' sobering but blues funny And What My Species Did.

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

The selections here were enjoyable and worth reading; some even rise to the level boldly claimed by the series title. The editor, Elaine Equi, captured a reasonable variety of styles and voices. I cavilled about many of the poems at first but was won over as I read along.

Many of the poems were lyrically very satisfying, some astonishing in their subversion of the English language, some urgent in a shake-you-awake kind of way.

Equi values humor, which is fine unless it veers into flippancy, and has a fondness for trendy phrases and topics such as "working virtually" and "comfort zone."

Although I don't tend to like artist statements that explain their poems, some of the ones at the end of this book did help me feel connected to the poets and their work.

[kyle pastor · Rating 4 out of 5]

only a handful of poems i like but the ones i did hit hard

some lines:
hooky by ada limon
“we skipped that last class, rolled joints in my clean apartment close to a bar… I was straight As and deans list but could roll three perfect joints and even add a filter”

tablets VI by dunya mikhail
“there are days we wait for and they come
and there are days that happen to us and we cannot avoid”

all of:
only death wows me by mitch sisskind

the political charge of:
that’s american by lee ann brown

the vibe of:
as i wander lonely in the cloud by harryette mullen
something ive not bought by jerome sala

[shivani n · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this for my summer homework, and it was actually quite nice to read some poetry. a lot of the poems in here were great, my favourite was "tablets VI" by dunya mikhail. however, even though all poetry is romantic in its own way, i still think it's a crime there's not a single love poem in this whole anthology lol.

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another little library find, there were some good ones in here and definitely some flops. Here are ones I liked:

330 College Avenue by Joanna Fuhrman

A Marvelous Sky by Vincent Katz

Moonrise by Maureen N. McLane

Tablets VI by Dunya Mikhail

and probably a few others I’m forgetting about! Curious what the other editions are like.

[Shanereads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished this wonderful poetry book! Honestly poetry really isn't my thing, and I have not read any in a really long time. However, I was excited to read something new when this came in the mail! The Best American Poetry 2023 was published earlier this month, so you can get your copy today!

My favorite poem was Dramaturgy by Jason Schneiderman

This finished copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Huge thanks to @scribnerbooks books for my finished copy!

[Lucy! · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is so hard but when my professor started analyzing these I was kinda liking them......

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

To say “the best of 2023” is laughable. High schoolers are writing more compelling pieces. One of the editors, David Lehman, published his own underwhelming and bland poem that wouldn’t be published in a local magazine. Honestly I found like 8 poems I liked, 3 that I felt were actually good. I’m not even a super picky reader, it’s not that all the poems are bad, they’re just not great. And certainly not “the best”.

Save your time and money, check out what’s been published in The New Yorker this year.

[Todd Saukko · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved a handful of poems in this issue. When reading these volumes you run the risk of not liking any of the poems. I was pleasantly surprised.

[Janessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elaine Equi is the guest editor of the 2023 collection. In the preface she writes, “More than simply entertaining us, humor, satire and irony in poetry help us meet life’s absurdities.” And to that end, she gatheres together a sampling of poems that are witty, wry, clever and quirky, providing us with an entertaining and enlightening read.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of poems is mediocre. There were a lot of poems that seemed to be included merely because of political leanings rather than the poetic power of the text. Poetry is inherently political, yes, but it's a call to arms in all spheres, including beauty and goodness.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

As is always the case with the Best American anthologies, whether short stories or poetry or science writing, etc., the guest editor makes a big difference. Sometimes your taste aligns perfectly with the editor’s, sometimes you’re in the neighborhood, and sometimes you just have different sensibilities and preferences. Unfortunately, the last was the case with me with Best American Poetry 2023. Last year’s Best ’22 was my favorite in a number of years, and this was my least favorite in years. From feast to famine. Ah well, it’s not unexpected.

Poetry is obviously a highly subjective taste, so while I’ll note a few highlights within the anthology, rather than give an up or down review, I’d simply suggest potential readers find a library copy and give it a whirl. For me, the poems frequently felt oddly emotionally distant, landing without much impact. That might have been balanced out by a playfulness of style/language, a startling use of word or image, a sense of musicality via sound, but that too didn’t happen very often. If you respond well to the first 20 pages or so, keep reading as you’re clearly more in tune with the guest editor than I was. On the other hand, if you find yourself not responding well, maybe check out a few of the poems noted below, or just leaf through and see what catches your eye. Though I didn’t care at all for the collection as a whole, that’s not to say there aren’t any poems I enjoyed. They were just too few and far between. Here are three examples across a spectrum of forms/style:

“330 College Avenue” by Joanna Fuhrman
this poem has a killer opening: “After she dies, your mother moves back/into your childhood home,” a strong close, “At six years old, you didn’t care that ‘motherness’/was not a real word./Or a real world. Neither did your mother,” and some lovely moments in between

"Night Heron”" by Amy Gerstler
A fast paced poem that makes deft, effective use of sound as well as image, with rhymes, near-rhymes, assonance, consonance, and repetition running throughout: “till twilight arrives, “flaps past”, “roosts . . . groups,” “whirr of wings . . . trivial things”, all leading to a strong closing line

“Places with Terrible Wi-Fi” by J. Estanislao Lopez
A prose poem that, as the title implies, is driven by the list structure as Lopez names said places, which include “My ancestors’ graves …Most of the past. The very distant future . . .” all linked by a theme which gradually becomes clear and leading inevitably to a moving close.

[Jon Corelis · Rating 1 out of 5]

That it should come to this


We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket.
-- John Keats


I forget now in which of her film reviews Pauline Kael said that the film under review was so bad that after sitting through it she actually felt stoned on boredom, but after reading through The Best American Poetry 2023 I can see what she meant. The selections have a tedious variety: each one seems to amount in its own smugly ingenious way to a tendentious, strained argument for why you have to like it as a poem. But to be worth reading and remembering, a poem must seduce, not demand. Reading through the poems in this collection is like watching a series of brief video clips showing various people trying to get a date by issuing subpoenas.

But if the book is of scant interest as poetry, it is of considerable value as an example of what has happened to poetry in American society: it has become academic in the worst sense of the word. Beneath their spurious variety, these poems are actually narrowly limited to the types of diction, subject, tone, and poetic and rhetorical strategies sanctified by contemporary creative writing programs, grant applications, and academic hiring and tenure committees. These poems are not works of art, they are credentials. Rather than quote passages here to support my criticism (an exercise which I am reluctant to inflict either on my readers or on myself) I think it would be easier to suggest that any who may be unintimidated by the book’s implicit demand that “you have to like this because it’s poetry” read through the book with my comments in mind, and then ask themselves whether the Emperor is wearing any clothes.

It is as astonishing as it is discouraging that the poetry of the nation which produced Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H. D., Robert Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, e e cummings, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsberg should be reduced to this yawn-inducing assemblage of arid pretentious exercises.

[Two footnotes: (1) The collection includes a hitherto unpublished poem by W. H. Auden which is very good. I don’t see why he never published it; perhaps he felt he was continuing in a style which he had already done enough with. (2) The book’s cover is illustrated with a portrait of Anna Akhmatova, a fine poet, but why choose a portrait of a Russian poet to illustrate a collection of American poetry?]

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I have finally reached the age where I will not even try to read these anthologies. For over thirty years I’ve read them (off and on since I broke from my own poetry 25 years ago before finally diving back in a few years ago) and I have never liked the vast majority of poems ever featured in them. I always felt it was some moral failing on my part. I am a poet and writer who majored in creative writing. This is supposed to be the best. It’s in the title.

But no. This is just not ever going to be an anthology that moves me. It’s not that I want that Instagram poetry where it’s a whiny sentence broken into 8 lines, but I like a little more relatability and feeling and accessibility and lyricism and cleverness and vulnerability and beauty (the darker the better if I’m going to be honest). I am just never going to appreciate academic poetry and I’m done thinking this makes me somehow lesser.

Sample poem from this book:

TONY TRIGILIO
The Steeplejack

a man in scarlet
lets down a rope as a spider spins a thread
—Marianne Moore

What about the steeplejack malingering
on the spire? Easy to dismiss his low-key
fanfare—just another private rhapsody
above the chapel. Pour him the widest
tablespoon of scotch. He’s earned it,
picking briars from the rough bell tower,
a captain perched on the quarterdeck.
Someone tell the seagull sailing around
the lighthouse that work has gone digital.
Our imps spin profits en masse and you
better hope it’s never enough. Necessity
and coercion feel like freedom, like we
can live beyond what was unbelievable.
Like we create our own enormity.

from Marsh Hawk Review

It’s a perfectly nice poem and actually not one that annoyed me like so many others in the book (I chose this because it was one of the shorter ones for quoting) but it just doesn’t move me or titillate me or inspire me or any of the things other types of poems do. And honestly, this one is far more understandable and relatable than many featured in this book. I’m finally done trying to make myself read this series or beating myself up for honestly disliking it for all of these decades.

If you typically like this series, this one will not disappoint. For me it failed to deliver, as always, and I’m moving on.

I read a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

[Kerfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this on the shelf in the library--I'm always interested in anthologies, and figured it would give me a good idea of what is currently considered great work. It must have been during poetry month because I've used up my renewals and must return it this week. As with all poetry books, I read slowly, maybe one or two poems in a day.

I read a lot of poetry, though, always having a couple books in process, and also reading poetry online. But the majority of these poems failed to engage me at all, often making me roll my eyes in disbelief. I can't believe this is the "Best" the editor could find. Am I so out of touch with what poetry is or should be, or am I only out of synch with the current trends, which seem pedestrian and self-centered? Very few even had memorable lines, let alone being worthy of remembering and re-reading. Even in poems I don't like there are usually memorable lines.

What I disliked most of all was the failure to engage with any kind of rhythm and/or language--to savor the sounds of words and the music they can can make. I like a poem that sings, that evokes the wonder and mystery inherent in being alive. Coming across a poem by Arthur Sze was like finding a jewel in a box of shredded paper.

Out of 70 poems, I thought ten were excellent, and another fourteen to be at least worth a second reading. But that's not a very large percentage.

Looking at my review of the 2018 volume of this series, it seems that I liked that editor's selections better. So maybe it's just that the editor here, Elaine Equi, and I have completely different taste. All art is subjective to a certain degree.

As I did then, I will note a few of my favorites--the aforementioned Arthur Sze, Joanna Fuhrman, Carolyn Marie Rogers, and Peter Gizzi.

I saw a world that was an afternoon.
This cloud in my hand.
Sky pouring into sky reflecting the absolute of the lake.
The flock and its tangle of shadow.
--Gizzi, from "Revisionary"

That is what I'm looking for in a poem.

[B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, I would give this collection a B- average (technically an 80.5% avg.) as far as the quality of the poems contained. I know that attempting to quantify poetic effect/value is a ridiculous gesture, but I am simply a ridiculous person. Of course, this is purely based on my own tastes and will not necessarily reflect your average satisfaction rate.

Increasingly, the state of American Poetry is more and more defined by coastal Creative Writing MFA programs, and a total dearth of restraint and editing prowess (on the poets's parts, not the editors selecting the poems for the volume) are rendering the majority of output willfully obscure and without genuine exigence. I keep post-it note reviews beneath each poem and leave dates next to them for posterity. Too many of them are starting to sound exactly like these:

"Okay, it's just getting frustrating now. Can we please have some poems with persuasion? A purpose? Not just a random assortment of autobiographical fragments and sub-Ashbery fragments?"

"Pedantic Horse Shit."

That said, there will always be good poetry out there. This isn't the worst BAP I've read even if it is down there. Seek out the poems below, but not necessarily this entire edition.

Masterpieces (5)
"The Years" by Alex Dimitrov
"I Ask That I Do Not Die" by Ilya Kaminsky
"The Facts" by Kathleen Ossip
"Something I've Not Bought" by Jerome Sala
"Parallel Bars" by Geoffrey Young

Masterful (5)
"The Shape of Biddle City" by Marianne Chan
"Traces" by David Lehman
"Film Theory" by Xan Phillips
"Dramaturgy" by Jason Schneiderman
"Listening in Deep Space" by Diane Thiel

Masters Candidates (9)
"World's End" by Victoria Chang
"After the Exhibition" by Stuart Dischell
"Night Herons" by Amy Gerstler
"A Marvelous Sky" by Vincent Katz
"Tablets IV" by Dunya Mikhail
"As I Wander Lonely In the Cloud" by Harryette Mullen
"Sunday Cave" by Yuko Otomo
"Brown Furniture" by Katha Pollitt
"The Empty Grave of Zsa Zsa Gabor" by Matthew Zapruder

Overall, I would absolutely to highly recommend approx. 25.3% of the poems contained in this volume.

[Pie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hi Mom!

Really enjoyed reading this anthology as I always do with Best American Poetry! I loved 30 of the poems here, which is actually quite significant compared to the 2022 volume.

I especially ADORED “Green Moon” by Dorothea Lasky. Ok, yes, she’s my favorite poet, so I’m biased, but “Green Moon” is just an unspeakably magical poem — might be (probably is) my new favorite poem by her. I mean, come on, lines like “If I could do it over again / I wouldn’t” and “Nothing like a lake / To go admire / As you drive past it” and “And if you showed up here tonight / Like I wanted you to / I wouldn’t stop to apologize / I’d embrace you / How I wanted you then / How I still do” !!! Are you kidding me! I also love what she wrote about the poem in the back of the book, with her bio — she wrote about the color green as “haunted” by being opposite red on the color wheel, and tinged with regret, so obviously “Green Moon” is a poem about romantic regret… I’m in love. Wow.

But besides Dorothea Lasky, there were 29 other standouts that I will be thinking about and returning to until BAP 2024 is released! Diane Seuss’ “Little Fugue (State)” and Joanna Fuhrman’s “330 College Avenue” are other favorites.

Only complaint is the sheer number of Covid poems is a little disheartening. Of course the poems people were starting to write in 2020 were published a couple years later, and now anthologized in BAP 2023… but golly do I hate reading pandemic poems.

Love you mama! Miss you tons.
Pie

[Robert Yokoyama · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the diversity of themes in this collection of poems. My favorite poem is "A Deafening Prayer". The poem's title is a kind of an oxymoron. The poet is saying on the surface that prayer is an activity that is done loudly, but the poem is a more about the reasons why people pray like for peace or for rain. My other favorite poem is "Brown Furniture". I like this poem because it is a reminder that memories can be attached to pieces of furniture like a chair, a dining table, and a bookshelf. I enjoy the sentiment of this poem very much. I also enjoy the poem "I Meant To". This poem is about a man lamenting about getting old, but this poem reminds me to cherish getting older and wiser. "Places With Terrible Wi Fi" is a funny poem because I am always looking for places with good wi fi to do my work. 330 College Avenue is a beautiful poem about a man whose mother has passed. Even though my mom is still alive, this poem is a reminder that I can improve our relationship. The themes in these poems in this collection resonate with me very much.