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The Best American Poetry 2022
Matthew Zapruder picks the poems for the 2022 edition of The Best American Poetry , “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” ( Chicago Tribune).
Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a selection of the year’s most brilliant, striking, and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work.
For The Best American Poetry 2022 guest editor Matthew Zapruder, whose own poems are “for everyone, everywhere...democratic in [their] insights and feelings” (NPR), has selected the seventy-five new poems that represent American poetry today at its most dynamic. Chosen from print and online magazines, from the popular to the little-known, the selection is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.
The series and guest editors contribute valuable introductory essays that illuminate the current state of American poetry.
Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a selection of the year’s most brilliant, striking, and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work.
For The Best American Poetry 2022 guest editor Matthew Zapruder, whose own poems are “for everyone, everywhere...democratic in [their] insights and feelings” (NPR), has selected the seventy-five new poems that represent American poetry today at its most dynamic. Chosen from print and online magazines, from the popular to the little-known, the selection is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.
The series and guest editors contribute valuable introductory essays that illuminate the current state of American poetry.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published September 13, 2022
49 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
About the author
David Lehman
124 books55 followersDavid Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
June 22, 2022
** Thanks so much to NetGally, David Lehman, Matthew Zapruder, and Scribner for this ARC**
The Best American Poetry 2022 will be out September 13th, 2022.
I really enjoyed this anthology! Like with all anthologies, there were poems that spoke to me more or less than others. Some poems would have been 5 stars alone, while others might have been 3 or 4. It felt most appropriate to give the whole anthology a rating of 4. I enjoyed reconnecting with old favorites and finding some new ones, like E. C. Belli, James Cagney, Bill Carty, Jennifer Chang, and April Goldman.
I have read some of the other "Best ____ of ___" books before, but this was my first book of poetry. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely try and read more!
The Best American Poetry 2022 will be out September 13th, 2022.
I really enjoyed this anthology! Like with all anthologies, there were poems that spoke to me more or less than others. Some poems would have been 5 stars alone, while others might have been 3 or 4. It felt most appropriate to give the whole anthology a rating of 4. I enjoyed reconnecting with old favorites and finding some new ones, like E. C. Belli, James Cagney, Bill Carty, Jennifer Chang, and April Goldman.
I have read some of the other "Best ____ of ___" books before, but this was my first book of poetry. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely try and read more!
Read
April 27, 2023Happy national poetry month!! My list of favorites here is entirely too long so here's the favorites of the favorites: Vows, E.C. Belli; Advice for Pliny the Elder, Big Daddy of Mansplainers, Tishani Doshi; What Would You Ask the Artist?, Terrance Hayes; Ode to Everything, Major Jackson; The Rest is Silence, Jason Koo; Reasons for Staying, Ocean Vuong; Hi How Are You, Robert Whitehead
November 4, 2022
In the late 1960s I came across an anthology of new American poetry on the shelves of my high school library. I had been systemically reading all of the poetry books on the shelf, everything from Catullus to a book of poetry for young adults. I discovered many poets in that volume, so I was excited to get The Best American Poetry 2022, knowing I would discover poets new to me.
I did find some familiar poets, including Gerald Stern, who so recently passed, and who I heard read from Lucky Life when a student at Temple University, whose Lest I Forget Thee is included. And poets whose recent books I was lucky to have received from the publisher, including Sharon Olds whose Best Friend Ballad was a favorite in her collection Balladz, and Charles Simic’s In the Lockdown from No Land in Sight.
Many of the poems reflect contemporary life: Covid isolation and fears, racism, the failure of the American Dream, loss, the things which sustain us.
I will note some of my favorites in this volume upon first reading.
Goblin by Matthew Dickman tells of a grandfather playacting a goblin to scares his child. “Half the time I had no idea what I was doing,” he writes about child raising, before continuing, “but I think we do know.” I was transported to my mother’s game of holding me over the side of the bed, saying the mice would eat my toes, and pulling me back to her in a hug. I was an adult before I realized it was why I was afraid to cross a dark room at night, worried that something would eat my toes!
Lisa Muradyan reflects a mother’s concern during the pandemic in Quoting the Bible: “I place a green dinosaur/mask on his face,/don’t be afraid, I spray/ his hands with disinfectant/ don’t be afraid/I hold him close.”
“I would love to live/In a country that lets me grow old,” Jericho Brown writes in Inaugural.
Biographies of each poet includes a comment on the poem included, which I often found as moving as the poem. “I have been thinking more and more about what it means to reproduce ourselves–through art, through offspring–what it means to live, love, age, die, leave a legacy when our world is facing potential extinction,” Cathy Linh Che comments on Marriage. It is something I often think about, age 70 and without a grandchild, our son the last to carry on his family name, making my quilts and writing my reviews.
My Father’s Mustache arose when Ada Limon’s father sent her a photograph of himself from the 1970s when he was young and in his prime; it had been a year since they had seen each other. His portrait of him is so vivid, sporting the “lush mustache” she “adored.” “As a child I once cried when he shaved it. Even then/I was too attached to this life.” I recalled my husband from that time with his dark hair and thick mustache and tan designer suit.
Elegy on Fire by D. A. Powell grew out his frustration with Fourth of July fireworks that are potential fire threats, a fear I share as we live a block away from a a yearly big fireworks display; the poem morphed into something deeper. “I want to wake up the neighbors/the way they once woke me the/building’s on fire get out get out/I want to have already rebuilt after/patriotism had hurled its sparklers/in its trash and scorched us all”.
Erika A. Sanchez’s Departure is chilling, a poem that helped her work through trauma.
As things kept getting worse in 2020, William Waltz wrote In a dark time, the eye begins to see. “When we looked/past the flames/all was a curtain/of mystery and ignorance,/so we poked the pit/with pointed sticks.”
The seventy-five poems are chosen from online and print magazines. I loved the diversity and the timely subjects and themes.
I received an ARC from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
I did find some familiar poets, including Gerald Stern, who so recently passed, and who I heard read from Lucky Life when a student at Temple University, whose Lest I Forget Thee is included. And poets whose recent books I was lucky to have received from the publisher, including Sharon Olds whose Best Friend Ballad was a favorite in her collection Balladz, and Charles Simic’s In the Lockdown from No Land in Sight.
Many of the poems reflect contemporary life: Covid isolation and fears, racism, the failure of the American Dream, loss, the things which sustain us.
I will note some of my favorites in this volume upon first reading.
Goblin by Matthew Dickman tells of a grandfather playacting a goblin to scares his child. “Half the time I had no idea what I was doing,” he writes about child raising, before continuing, “but I think we do know.” I was transported to my mother’s game of holding me over the side of the bed, saying the mice would eat my toes, and pulling me back to her in a hug. I was an adult before I realized it was why I was afraid to cross a dark room at night, worried that something would eat my toes!
Lisa Muradyan reflects a mother’s concern during the pandemic in Quoting the Bible: “I place a green dinosaur/mask on his face,/don’t be afraid, I spray/ his hands with disinfectant/ don’t be afraid/I hold him close.”
“I would love to live/In a country that lets me grow old,” Jericho Brown writes in Inaugural.
Biographies of each poet includes a comment on the poem included, which I often found as moving as the poem. “I have been thinking more and more about what it means to reproduce ourselves–through art, through offspring–what it means to live, love, age, die, leave a legacy when our world is facing potential extinction,” Cathy Linh Che comments on Marriage. It is something I often think about, age 70 and without a grandchild, our son the last to carry on his family name, making my quilts and writing my reviews.
My Father’s Mustache arose when Ada Limon’s father sent her a photograph of himself from the 1970s when he was young and in his prime; it had been a year since they had seen each other. His portrait of him is so vivid, sporting the “lush mustache” she “adored.” “As a child I once cried when he shaved it. Even then/I was too attached to this life.” I recalled my husband from that time with his dark hair and thick mustache and tan designer suit.
Elegy on Fire by D. A. Powell grew out his frustration with Fourth of July fireworks that are potential fire threats, a fear I share as we live a block away from a a yearly big fireworks display; the poem morphed into something deeper. “I want to wake up the neighbors/the way they once woke me the/building’s on fire get out get out/I want to have already rebuilt after/patriotism had hurled its sparklers/in its trash and scorched us all”.
Erika A. Sanchez’s Departure is chilling, a poem that helped her work through trauma.
As things kept getting worse in 2020, William Waltz wrote In a dark time, the eye begins to see. “When we looked/past the flames/all was a curtain/of mystery and ignorance,/so we poked the pit/with pointed sticks.”
The seventy-five poems are chosen from online and print magazines. I loved the diversity and the timely subjects and themes.
I received an ARC from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
April 20, 2023
First, a confession: I am heavily biased toward liking this book because it includes Diane Seuss's poem "Modern Poetry" that I selected for the Quarter Notes feature in The Adirondack Review. Seeing Diane's poem associated with the name of our little journal is a lot bigger thrill than I would've imagined. That said, this is an excellent addition to the series. Guest Editor Matthew Zapruder went in a completely different direction from Tracy K. Smith in the 2021 edition. Rather than picking the perfect from all the usual big-name jornals, Zapruder took some poems from those, but also a lot of pieces from unfamiliar online journals (such as The Adirondack Review, wink wink). His selections also lean much more toward the experimental at times, which isn't usually to my taste, but that were quite fascinating to read this time around. There's plenty of the familiar, also, including poems from the recently deceased Charles Simic and Dean Young. And, of course, every volume is worth reading just for series editor David Lehman's introduction.
All in all, this edition was more interesting and thought-provoking than usual. While the 2008, 2005, and 2021 editions remain my top 3, 2022 isn't far behind. I highly recommend it.
UPDATE: 1/22/23:
Every time I read this volume, I find more to love about it. It is definitely one of my top 3 in the series.
All in all, this edition was more interesting and thought-provoking than usual. While the 2008, 2005, and 2021 editions remain my top 3, 2022 isn't far behind. I highly recommend it.
UPDATE: 1/22/23:
Every time I read this volume, I find more to love about it. It is definitely one of my top 3 in the series.
September 30, 2022
Like most anthologies, some of these poems were amazing, inventive, and painful, some just forgettable, and most were pretty good, which makes this hard to rate. Instead, I’ll leave some recognizable names that might convince you to read, and I’ll note some of my favorite poems.
Oliver Baez Bendorf, Jericho Brown, Louise Gluck, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limon, Ocean Vuong, Jenny Zhang
Favorites:
Vows - E. C. Belli
Outer Lands - Bill Carty
The Innocent - Jennifer Chang
Today: What is Sexy - Laura Cronk
Separate but Umbilical Situations Relating to My Father - Diana Marie Delgado
Goblin - Matthew Dickman
Let Me - Camille T. Dungy
Into the Mountains - April Goldman
Against Death - Noor Hindi
How to Greet a Warbler - Yesenia Montilla
Best Friend Ballad - Sharon Olds
Follow Them - Matthew Rohrer
The Infant’s Eyes - Bianca Stone
Elegy for the Gnat - El Williams III
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
Oliver Baez Bendorf, Jericho Brown, Louise Gluck, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limon, Ocean Vuong, Jenny Zhang
Favorites:
Vows - E. C. Belli
Outer Lands - Bill Carty
The Innocent - Jennifer Chang
Today: What is Sexy - Laura Cronk
Separate but Umbilical Situations Relating to My Father - Diana Marie Delgado
Goblin - Matthew Dickman
Let Me - Camille T. Dungy
Into the Mountains - April Goldman
Against Death - Noor Hindi
How to Greet a Warbler - Yesenia Montilla
Best Friend Ballad - Sharon Olds
Follow Them - Matthew Rohrer
The Infant’s Eyes - Bianca Stone
Elegy for the Gnat - El Williams III
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
September 13, 2024
when it comes to contemporary poetry and who knows what else it seems that i’m not as adept at suspending my prejudgements as i’d like to think because these poets really be writing about the gnat they accidentally killed and playing with the formatting on their google docs but i have to remind myself that a poem’s imitability does not necessarily denote its depthlessness but still!
March 20, 2024
This was a brilliant collection of poetry. I loved the way it was structured ~ there's something for everyone. It presents many different styles - prose, rhyme, free verse... and a lot of creativity. Although it's a consolidation of a wide variety of contexts, it works as a collection. The poems all vibe together, each one somewhat up for your own interpretation. This leaves you with lingering thoughts... questions and wonderings about deeper meanings, as well as creative sparks and ideas. This specific book inspired me to write a poetry collection for my IWP (Independent Writing Project) in ELA class. Although you may not be an author, it leaves you with a spark. Whether that's inspiring you as a musician, dancer, artist... or just inspiring you as a person.
December 20, 2022
The best volume in this series since James Tate's! A remarkable collection.
December 31, 2022
as always with best americans, some poems so incredible you feel blessed to be literate, some poems so bad you wonder if they bribed the editor
October 11, 2022
Any anthology full of great poetry chosen by a master poet (in this case Matthew Zapruder) is bound to be a rich read, and this one certainly was a feast. Zapruder's introduction appealed to me, as he says he has chosen the poems specifically for those of us "uncertain what poetry is for." Poems may not know all the answers, but they ask the hard questions, he says.
I was disappointed after that introduction that I found some of the poems impenetrable. But there were enough poems that did touch me that I would still recommend this book.
Oliver Baez Bendorf's "What the Dead Can Do" was an early favorite, naming all the things we say are signs from our dead loved ones: a song coming on the radio, a red bird appearing before us, rainbows lighting the sky, animal tracks in the snow. The poem seems to be mocking us for our desire to ascribe a mythical meaning to everything we see after a loss.
I also was struck by a very long poem, much longer than I usually love, "The Rest is Silence" by Jason Koo. He writes about what it's like to be the only POC in an all white neighborhood, school, bar, building. The title is referenced in its ending, which refers to what signs of racism Audre Lorde would consider worth challenging. Koo feels Asian Americans are the POC group most closely aligned with whiteness, and Koo wonders if Lorde would have wanted to confront, as he fantasizes doing, the whiteness of the bar he's in, whether she would have thought of it "as worth/ the unrest, but maybe calculations like this/ prove our difference, my greater alignment/ with Whiteness, my ability to choose rest/ or unrest, when for her, the rest was silence."
I also loved "Best Friend Ballad" by Sharon Olds, in which she recalls her friend, 9 years old, dying of lead poisoning, while her only job when visiting her was to conceal from her friend that the little girl's mother had died the day before, "so she could die as if she had a mother." That poem is from Threepenny Review, from which many of the poems were drawn.
I also liked several poems about the pandemic lockdown:
* "Quoting the Bible by Luisa Muradyan, in which she repeats all day to her son, "Don't be afraid," as she puts on his mask and sterilizes his hands and keeps him from getting too close to anyone.
* Cecily Park's "Pandemic Parable," in which "her daughters are still so young that they've cried/ almost every day they've been alive."
* "In the Lockdown" by Charles Simic, which starts, "I might've gone crazy/ if not for solitude" and ends with recalled advice from his childhood that serves him well now, "Go sit quietlly and your room/ will teach you everything."
And I loved:
* DA Powell's "Elegy on Fire," which reminds us that "we love and don't love our parents/ who are after all just grown kids a/ little smarter than us perhaps but not/ by much especially when they vote."
* Ocean Vuong's reasons not to kill yourself, "Reasons for Staying," which includes "Because I made a promise."
If you love poetry and are not bothered when many poems in a book are a mystery, I would recommend you buy this book. Otherwise, this might be a great one to get from your library so you can just enjoy the ones that speak to you.
I was disappointed after that introduction that I found some of the poems impenetrable. But there were enough poems that did touch me that I would still recommend this book.
Oliver Baez Bendorf's "What the Dead Can Do" was an early favorite, naming all the things we say are signs from our dead loved ones: a song coming on the radio, a red bird appearing before us, rainbows lighting the sky, animal tracks in the snow. The poem seems to be mocking us for our desire to ascribe a mythical meaning to everything we see after a loss.
I also was struck by a very long poem, much longer than I usually love, "The Rest is Silence" by Jason Koo. He writes about what it's like to be the only POC in an all white neighborhood, school, bar, building. The title is referenced in its ending, which refers to what signs of racism Audre Lorde would consider worth challenging. Koo feels Asian Americans are the POC group most closely aligned with whiteness, and Koo wonders if Lorde would have wanted to confront, as he fantasizes doing, the whiteness of the bar he's in, whether she would have thought of it "as worth/ the unrest, but maybe calculations like this/ prove our difference, my greater alignment/ with Whiteness, my ability to choose rest/ or unrest, when for her, the rest was silence."
I also loved "Best Friend Ballad" by Sharon Olds, in which she recalls her friend, 9 years old, dying of lead poisoning, while her only job when visiting her was to conceal from her friend that the little girl's mother had died the day before, "so she could die as if she had a mother." That poem is from Threepenny Review, from which many of the poems were drawn.
I also liked several poems about the pandemic lockdown:
* "Quoting the Bible by Luisa Muradyan, in which she repeats all day to her son, "Don't be afraid," as she puts on his mask and sterilizes his hands and keeps him from getting too close to anyone.
* Cecily Park's "Pandemic Parable," in which "her daughters are still so young that they've cried/ almost every day they've been alive."
* "In the Lockdown" by Charles Simic, which starts, "I might've gone crazy/ if not for solitude" and ends with recalled advice from his childhood that serves him well now, "Go sit quietlly and your room/ will teach you everything."
And I loved:
* DA Powell's "Elegy on Fire," which reminds us that "we love and don't love our parents/ who are after all just grown kids a/ little smarter than us perhaps but not/ by much especially when they vote."
* Ocean Vuong's reasons not to kill yourself, "Reasons for Staying," which includes "Because I made a promise."
If you love poetry and are not bothered when many poems in a book are a mystery, I would recommend you buy this book. Otherwise, this might be a great one to get from your library so you can just enjoy the ones that speak to you.
September 19, 2022
In his introduction to Best Poetry 2022, Guest Editor Matthew Zapruder addresses a potential reader: “If you are reading this and don’t read much poetery, or feel uncertain in relation to it, you are more than welcome here … I chose these poems thinking of you.” And honestly, though these types of collections will always be a mixed bag in terms of what readers respond to, and different ones will respond differently,I found this (if I recall correctly, always a big if) the most consistently enjoyable and accessible collection in this series in at least several years. Some poems here will challenge readers, others might frustrate, some will linger longer than others . As a general overview, while I’m sure I read more poetry than the vast majority of Americans simply because that bar is sadly so, so low, I think Zapruder characterizes his choices correctly and hope non-readers might take him up on that welcome. Finally, one of the best elements of the collection are the contributor notes at the back which are longer htan most such and offer up the poets’ thoughts on their poems, typically their inspiration. So people shouldn’t stop reading once they’ve hit the last poem; there’s a lot more that will reward the reader.
A few favorites
Jerciho Brown’s “Inaugural”: favorite line: “I would love to live/I a country that lets me grow old
Bill Carty’s “Outer Lands”: “And vow never to touch another living thing/for fear of how my being human might kill it”
Jennifer Chang’s “The Innocent”: “three smug eggs tucked into a nest, /the nest tucked into the crook/of a neighbor’s honeysuckle”
Tiana Clark “Broken Sestina Reaching for Black Joy”: “And I stopped/obsessively thinking/about death for a few moments, maybe even for a whole/evening, which was/the length of a tercet, an envoi sustained/with pleasure reaching for Black desire”
Cynthia Parker-Ohene;s : “In Virginia”: “Pearline keeps pristine from the tyranny of/mistress Virginia’s men”
Mark Wunderlich’s “First, Chill”: “ I imagine them as they wander high peaks/rippling like figures underwater …/a shape drawn and erased/so only the pencil’s impress remains/Now that they are frozen/I know they are truly dead/Let me let them go”
A few favorites
Jerciho Brown’s “Inaugural”: favorite line: “I would love to live/I a country that lets me grow old
Bill Carty’s “Outer Lands”: “And vow never to touch another living thing/for fear of how my being human might kill it”
Jennifer Chang’s “The Innocent”: “three smug eggs tucked into a nest, /the nest tucked into the crook/of a neighbor’s honeysuckle”
Tiana Clark “Broken Sestina Reaching for Black Joy”: “And I stopped/obsessively thinking/about death for a few moments, maybe even for a whole/evening, which was/the length of a tercet, an envoi sustained/with pleasure reaching for Black desire”
Cynthia Parker-Ohene;s : “In Virginia”: “Pearline keeps pristine from the tyranny of/mistress Virginia’s men”
Mark Wunderlich’s “First, Chill”: “ I imagine them as they wander high peaks/rippling like figures underwater …/a shape drawn and erased/so only the pencil’s impress remains/Now that they are frozen/I know they are truly dead/Let me let them go”
Read
May 2, 2023It turns out I'm a very picky reader -
standouts:
"Vows" by E. C. Belli
"Second Wind" by Louise Glück
"The Life of a Writer" by Jalynn Harris
"Myths About Trees" by Julia Anna Morrison
"After Graduate School" by Valencia Robin
"Little Time" by Alina Stefanescu
from "The Innocent" by Jennifer Chang
standouts:
"Vows" by E. C. Belli
"Second Wind" by Louise Glück
"The Life of a Writer" by Jalynn Harris
"Myths About Trees" by Julia Anna Morrison
"After Graduate School" by Valencia Robin
"Little Time" by Alina Stefanescu
... I watched our habits pass, the honeysuckle
fade from sickly sweet to nothing but heat.
Call it science. It's summer again, and then
everything's remnant ...
from "The Innocent" by Jennifer Chang
I'm not complaining. It was all more than I deserved.from "Modern Poetry" by Diane Seuss
The goat. The greenhouse. The liberated blonde badass
on her motorcycle. Sula. Surfacing. Sunday Morning.
Ripe plums. My education.
January 4, 2023
A welcome annual reminder of all the excellent poetry that's published beyond my radar.
The poems that made me want to read more from their authors were Gaslighter by Kristin Bock, Goblin by Matthew Dickman, Ode to Everything by Major Jackson, and Hair Sestina by Alexis Sears.
The poems that made me want to read more from their authors were Gaslighter by Kristin Bock, Goblin by Matthew Dickman, Ode to Everything by Major Jackson, and Hair Sestina by Alexis Sears.
April 27, 2023
This was a well thought out compilation of poetry. And the varied authors of poetry are well known and unknown to me. I enjoy these collections because I get to experience new writers in this new to me genre of poetry.
November 19, 2022
APRIL GOLDMAN
“Into the Mountains”
…
Mostly I feel like a child or elder, or a thing scraped together from what’s in between. One wants the blue indifference of the ocean to get inside them. One wants it to stay there and curl up.
…
Now it is time. My favorite word is if. I have a favorite word. I have a favorite everything. I have a favorite part of my body. It’s my mom. Mom, I say. Mom mom mom mom.
JERICHO BROWN “INAUGURAL”
We were told that it is dangerous to touch
And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time
Of disease, our grandmothers
Whole. We imagine an impossible
America and call one another
A fool for doing so. Can’t you feel it?
…
And when I speak it’s from beneath my self-
Imposed halo. You’ll forgive me if you can
Forgive yourself. I forgive you as you build
A museum of weapons we soon visit
To never forget what we once were. I forgive us
Our debts. We were told to wake up grateful,
So we try to fall asleep that way…
…
Others arrive with maps, magnifying
Glasses, and graphite pencils to find
Locations beside the mind where we are not
Patrolled or surveilled or corralled or chained.
…
I would love to live
In a country that lets me grow old.
We’ve put our hunger down for the time it takes
To come and reconcile ourselves to the land
Because it is holy, to the water
Because it swallowed our ancestors,
To the air because we are dumb enough
To decide on something as difficult
As love. If no one’s punishment leads to
Salvation, accountability must be
What waits to mend and move nations.
That’s for us to prove. That’s the deed
To witness. That’s the single item on the agenda
Read in Braille or by eye, ink drying like blood
Spilled this American hour of our lives.
VIEVEE FRANCIS
“1965: Harriet Richardson Wipes Galway Kinnell’s Face after State Troopers Beat Him with a Billy Club”
In Selma that day. The photograph. It is the way she is looking at him. Not his name. His pallor. Not the city, nor the event, not even the blood on his neck. When I saw the picture I realized someone cared enough to take it. There was only one lens. Then, the entire world wasn’t always watching. She pressed that cloth to his neck as intimate as a kiss whispered into the channel of an ear. Spontaneously. Sudden and overwhelming as a father’s embrace after a father’s failure to embrace. I was two years old. It was before I knew what I was born into. It would have been illegal for me to have married my husband. My husband stares at the picture, but a man so compassionate cannot easily take in its lack. It takes the violating or the violated to know. You know why Galway was there. Why pretend? The reward of courage is this: my husband told his parents he would marry me. Period. He expected his parents to live up to the values they espoused. They have. If I cry, my blue-eyed father-in-law—whose father left Germany in the nascent rise of Hitler—cries. Galway’s eye to Harriet’s brown as mine. Look at the way he looks at her. Like a sun rising twice to be Galway that day, looking up in the face of the tender after terror. See, the grace of gratitude. He being there. She being her.
FORREST GANDER
“Sea: Night Surfing in Bolinas”
Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette against detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the falling • swell explodes upward • as the underwave blows through it • a flash of visibility quickly • snuffed by night • the surf fizzling and churning • remitting itself to darkness • with a violent stertor • in competition with no other sounds
…
after twenty minutes the eyes • adjust, behind the hand dragging through water • bioluminescent trails
…
…for with you I became • aware of an exceptional chance • I don’t believe in • objective description, only • this mess, experience, the perceived • world sometimes shared • in which life doesn’t • endure, only • the void endures • but your vitality stirred it • leaving trails of excitation • I’ve risen from the bottom of • myself to find • I exist in you • exist in me and • against odds I’ve known even rapture, • rare event, • which calls for • but one witness
TERRANCE HAYES
“What Would You Ask the Artist?”
Dear Painter, can you share how you made the blue we
Find in certain of your paintings? Sometimes I catch it
Throwing a Godish glow over everything in the eye
Of a storm covered in lightning. I fear without you
The color will not be seen again except perhaps inside us
Where the bones hold its mercurial shades in them.
…
Above us
Are constellations a soul needs for guidance, the anthems
Of sawdust & approximation. As if in matters of our bodies we
Are the least reliable witnesses.
JASON KOO
“The Rest Is Silence”
…
And by absurd I mean so against
the natural, historical inertia of the norm
as to seem like a physical violation, that inertia
is the bedrock of all true power, the saturation
of the same so-be-it that has always been, what makes
a 7% diversity rating “acceptable,” what can we do
…
There is a “yesterday I find almost
impossible to lift,” as Elizabeth Bishop said
at the end of her career, not talking about race,
but I feel it mid-career, o rperhaps pre-career,
as whatever career I have always feels like a prelude
to an actual one, and this because of race,
I can say something about our lack of diversity
To my department, how for us and our school,
This starts with race…I went to speak in support of a coalition
Trying to get Whitmans’s last standing NYC home
At 99 Ryerson St. considered for landmarking
At a Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing
On six proposed LGBTQ sites (not including
Whitman’s) and I was the only POC offering
Public testimony in our group, I did that
Obligatory room check and saw just one
Older Asian gentleman and one Black woman
At the otherwise White table of commissioners,
Another Black woman sitting off to the side,
Of the table who presented research on why
Audre Lorde’s last home in Staten Island
Should be landmarked, and one Black man
Wearing a Vietnam Veterans cap sitting
With the rest of us in the public, he rose
To speak on the Lorde case, we’d already heard
Several prepared statements of support
Delivered by smart White folks representing
LGBTQ interests but I was most interested
In what this man had to say as the lone Black
Man in the audience, I assumed he was
Going to offer support but then got a lesson
In the complexities of identity politics
That Lorde spent a lifetime trying work
Out, he didn’t not offer support, he said
He wasn’t against landmarking the house,
But he was against the LPC writing him,
The wonder of that house for over twenty years,
To say he’d built an illegal deck at the back…
…
I don’t know if she would’ve said anything
about this bar, if she would’ve thought it worth
the unrest, but maybe calculations like this
prove our difference, my greater alignment
with Whiteness, my ability to choose rest or unrest,
when for her, the rest was silence.
LI-YOUNG LEE
“Big Clock”
When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother’s hair kept growing longer and blacker,
and my father’s body kept filling up with time.
I can’t see the year on the station’s calendar.
We slept under the stopped hands of the clock
until morning, when a man entered carrying a ladder.
He climbed up to the clock’s face and opened it with a key.
No one but he knew what he saw.
Below him, the mortal faces went on passing
toward all compass points.
People went on crossing borders,
buying tickets in one time zone and setting foot in another.
Crossing thresholds: sleep to waking and back,
waiting room to moving train and back,
war zone to safe zone and back.
Crossing between gain and loss:
learning new words for the world and the things in it.
Forgetting old words for the heart and the things in it.
And collecting words in a different language
for those three primary colors:
staying, leaving, and returning.
And only the man at the top of the ladder
understood what he saw behind the face
which was neither smiling nor frowning.
And my father’s body went on filling up with death
until it reached the highest etched mark
of his eyes and spilled into mine.
And my mother’s hair goes on
never reaching the earth.
YESENIA MONTILLA
“How to Greet a Warbler (for Christian Cooper)”
Today, walking in the tall grass
close to home, mask on, ears wide
I spotted a warbler all yellow-bellied
with its human eyes & soft-tongued
song & I imagined how we could have
lost another one of us to the kind of
violence only whiteness is allowed
to dream up & enact. His wings were
rousing up dirt in protest as if he too
was envisioning loss & I swear I wanted
to kneel before him & make of him
a church—
JAKE SKEETS
“Anthropocene: A Dictionary”
…
ooljéé’ biná’adinídíín: moonlight
…
bit’a’ : its sails or—its wing (s)
…
diyóół : wind (
…
nihootsoii : evening—somewhere northward
ALINA STEFANESCU
“Little Time”
We must go for a walk
in the freshly washed
world, he says.
We must venture into
the thicket with cacti
in our open corneas.
There is so much to see,
little time.
…
OCEAN VUONG
“Reasons for Staying”
October leaves coming down, as if called.
Morning fog through the wildrye beyond the train tracks.
…
That my best words came farthest from myself.
…
Because I stopped apologizing into visibility.
…
Because the hills keep burning in California.
Through red smoke, singing. Through the singing, a way out.
Because only music rhymes with music.
The words I’ve yet to use: timothy grass, jeffrey pine, celloing, cocksure, light-lusty, midnight-green, gentled, water-thin, lord (as verb), russet, pewter, lobotomy.
…
Sleeping in the back seat, leaving the town that broke me, whole.
Early snow falling from a clear, blushed sky.
As if called.
DEAN YOUNG
“Spark Theory”
…
what she said that day by the water
with the ashes making their arabesques.
Simultaneously not being here yet
being nowhere else, occasions
for evaporation, perfumes of
the incinerated instance, a man carried
from his own house in pieces.
Like a harp.
FELICIA ZAMORA
“Chris Martin Sings “Shiver” & I Shiver: A Poem for Madam Vice President”
…
This poem is for Madam Vice President Kamala Harris. This poem
is for how Martin sings “Shiver”
& I shiver at your smile the night the electoral votes
hit 290 blue. I see my face
in your smile—all the faces of history. I shiver for history.
I shiver for my smile
inside your smile. I shiver for the necessity of shivering
long overdue, shivers of shivers.
This poem is for the ghazal. This poem is a ghazal
because it’s a world view. We stitch
the stars down to earth now. We stitch the stars deep
inside the soil of us, cells, salt-water
guts. We stitch with hair & wishbones for eyes,
stitch until fingers bleed & then we stitch
on top of the stitches. We taught ourselves to sew. We
taught ourselves out of invisibility
the difference between the shadow cast & the body &
yet part of the body & how
a shadow means a body exists, a body in light. Step in,
dear sisters. Step in.
JENNY ZHANG
“under the chiming bell”
…
the holy don’t need us
wretches of a different order
looking for someone or nothing
I was supposed to be staff
then everything changed
and it didn’t even matter
I was born wrong
will someone tell someone who I am
will someone please please tell me
“Into the Mountains”
…
Mostly I feel like a child or elder, or a thing scraped together from what’s in between. One wants the blue indifference of the ocean to get inside them. One wants it to stay there and curl up.
…
Now it is time. My favorite word is if. I have a favorite word. I have a favorite everything. I have a favorite part of my body. It’s my mom. Mom, I say. Mom mom mom mom.
JERICHO BROWN “INAUGURAL”
We were told that it is dangerous to touch
And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time
Of disease, our grandmothers
Whole. We imagine an impossible
America and call one another
A fool for doing so. Can’t you feel it?
…
And when I speak it’s from beneath my self-
Imposed halo. You’ll forgive me if you can
Forgive yourself. I forgive you as you build
A museum of weapons we soon visit
To never forget what we once were. I forgive us
Our debts. We were told to wake up grateful,
So we try to fall asleep that way…
…
Others arrive with maps, magnifying
Glasses, and graphite pencils to find
Locations beside the mind where we are not
Patrolled or surveilled or corralled or chained.
…
I would love to live
In a country that lets me grow old.
We’ve put our hunger down for the time it takes
To come and reconcile ourselves to the land
Because it is holy, to the water
Because it swallowed our ancestors,
To the air because we are dumb enough
To decide on something as difficult
As love. If no one’s punishment leads to
Salvation, accountability must be
What waits to mend and move nations.
That’s for us to prove. That’s the deed
To witness. That’s the single item on the agenda
Read in Braille or by eye, ink drying like blood
Spilled this American hour of our lives.
VIEVEE FRANCIS
“1965: Harriet Richardson Wipes Galway Kinnell’s Face after State Troopers Beat Him with a Billy Club”
In Selma that day. The photograph. It is the way she is looking at him. Not his name. His pallor. Not the city, nor the event, not even the blood on his neck. When I saw the picture I realized someone cared enough to take it. There was only one lens. Then, the entire world wasn’t always watching. She pressed that cloth to his neck as intimate as a kiss whispered into the channel of an ear. Spontaneously. Sudden and overwhelming as a father’s embrace after a father’s failure to embrace. I was two years old. It was before I knew what I was born into. It would have been illegal for me to have married my husband. My husband stares at the picture, but a man so compassionate cannot easily take in its lack. It takes the violating or the violated to know. You know why Galway was there. Why pretend? The reward of courage is this: my husband told his parents he would marry me. Period. He expected his parents to live up to the values they espoused. They have. If I cry, my blue-eyed father-in-law—whose father left Germany in the nascent rise of Hitler—cries. Galway’s eye to Harriet’s brown as mine. Look at the way he looks at her. Like a sun rising twice to be Galway that day, looking up in the face of the tender after terror. See, the grace of gratitude. He being there. She being her.
FORREST GANDER
“Sea: Night Surfing in Bolinas”
Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette against detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the falling • swell explodes upward • as the underwave blows through it • a flash of visibility quickly • snuffed by night • the surf fizzling and churning • remitting itself to darkness • with a violent stertor • in competition with no other sounds
…
after twenty minutes the eyes • adjust, behind the hand dragging through water • bioluminescent trails
…
…for with you I became • aware of an exceptional chance • I don’t believe in • objective description, only • this mess, experience, the perceived • world sometimes shared • in which life doesn’t • endure, only • the void endures • but your vitality stirred it • leaving trails of excitation • I’ve risen from the bottom of • myself to find • I exist in you • exist in me and • against odds I’ve known even rapture, • rare event, • which calls for • but one witness
TERRANCE HAYES
“What Would You Ask the Artist?”
Dear Painter, can you share how you made the blue we
Find in certain of your paintings? Sometimes I catch it
Throwing a Godish glow over everything in the eye
Of a storm covered in lightning. I fear without you
The color will not be seen again except perhaps inside us
Where the bones hold its mercurial shades in them.
…
Above us
Are constellations a soul needs for guidance, the anthems
Of sawdust & approximation. As if in matters of our bodies we
Are the least reliable witnesses.
JASON KOO
“The Rest Is Silence”
…
And by absurd I mean so against
the natural, historical inertia of the norm
as to seem like a physical violation, that inertia
is the bedrock of all true power, the saturation
of the same so-be-it that has always been, what makes
a 7% diversity rating “acceptable,” what can we do
…
There is a “yesterday I find almost
impossible to lift,” as Elizabeth Bishop said
at the end of her career, not talking about race,
but I feel it mid-career, o rperhaps pre-career,
as whatever career I have always feels like a prelude
to an actual one, and this because of race,
I can say something about our lack of diversity
To my department, how for us and our school,
This starts with race…I went to speak in support of a coalition
Trying to get Whitmans’s last standing NYC home
At 99 Ryerson St. considered for landmarking
At a Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing
On six proposed LGBTQ sites (not including
Whitman’s) and I was the only POC offering
Public testimony in our group, I did that
Obligatory room check and saw just one
Older Asian gentleman and one Black woman
At the otherwise White table of commissioners,
Another Black woman sitting off to the side,
Of the table who presented research on why
Audre Lorde’s last home in Staten Island
Should be landmarked, and one Black man
Wearing a Vietnam Veterans cap sitting
With the rest of us in the public, he rose
To speak on the Lorde case, we’d already heard
Several prepared statements of support
Delivered by smart White folks representing
LGBTQ interests but I was most interested
In what this man had to say as the lone Black
Man in the audience, I assumed he was
Going to offer support but then got a lesson
In the complexities of identity politics
That Lorde spent a lifetime trying work
Out, he didn’t not offer support, he said
He wasn’t against landmarking the house,
But he was against the LPC writing him,
The wonder of that house for over twenty years,
To say he’d built an illegal deck at the back…
…
I don’t know if she would’ve said anything
about this bar, if she would’ve thought it worth
the unrest, but maybe calculations like this
prove our difference, my greater alignment
with Whiteness, my ability to choose rest or unrest,
when for her, the rest was silence.
LI-YOUNG LEE
“Big Clock”
When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother’s hair kept growing longer and blacker,
and my father’s body kept filling up with time.
I can’t see the year on the station’s calendar.
We slept under the stopped hands of the clock
until morning, when a man entered carrying a ladder.
He climbed up to the clock’s face and opened it with a key.
No one but he knew what he saw.
Below him, the mortal faces went on passing
toward all compass points.
People went on crossing borders,
buying tickets in one time zone and setting foot in another.
Crossing thresholds: sleep to waking and back,
waiting room to moving train and back,
war zone to safe zone and back.
Crossing between gain and loss:
learning new words for the world and the things in it.
Forgetting old words for the heart and the things in it.
And collecting words in a different language
for those three primary colors:
staying, leaving, and returning.
And only the man at the top of the ladder
understood what he saw behind the face
which was neither smiling nor frowning.
And my father’s body went on filling up with death
until it reached the highest etched mark
of his eyes and spilled into mine.
And my mother’s hair goes on
never reaching the earth.
YESENIA MONTILLA
“How to Greet a Warbler (for Christian Cooper)”
Today, walking in the tall grass
close to home, mask on, ears wide
I spotted a warbler all yellow-bellied
with its human eyes & soft-tongued
song & I imagined how we could have
lost another one of us to the kind of
violence only whiteness is allowed
to dream up & enact. His wings were
rousing up dirt in protest as if he too
was envisioning loss & I swear I wanted
to kneel before him & make of him
a church—
JAKE SKEETS
“Anthropocene: A Dictionary”
…
ooljéé’ biná’adinídíín: moonlight
…
bit’a’ : its sails or—its wing (s)
…
diyóół : wind (
…
nihootsoii : evening—somewhere northward
ALINA STEFANESCU
“Little Time”
We must go for a walk
in the freshly washed
world, he says.
We must venture into
the thicket with cacti
in our open corneas.
There is so much to see,
little time.
…
OCEAN VUONG
“Reasons for Staying”
October leaves coming down, as if called.
Morning fog through the wildrye beyond the train tracks.
…
That my best words came farthest from myself.
…
Because I stopped apologizing into visibility.
…
Because the hills keep burning in California.
Through red smoke, singing. Through the singing, a way out.
Because only music rhymes with music.
The words I’ve yet to use: timothy grass, jeffrey pine, celloing, cocksure, light-lusty, midnight-green, gentled, water-thin, lord (as verb), russet, pewter, lobotomy.
…
Sleeping in the back seat, leaving the town that broke me, whole.
Early snow falling from a clear, blushed sky.
As if called.
DEAN YOUNG
“Spark Theory”
…
what she said that day by the water
with the ashes making their arabesques.
Simultaneously not being here yet
being nowhere else, occasions
for evaporation, perfumes of
the incinerated instance, a man carried
from his own house in pieces.
Like a harp.
FELICIA ZAMORA
“Chris Martin Sings “Shiver” & I Shiver: A Poem for Madam Vice President”
…
This poem is for Madam Vice President Kamala Harris. This poem
is for how Martin sings “Shiver”
& I shiver at your smile the night the electoral votes
hit 290 blue. I see my face
in your smile—all the faces of history. I shiver for history.
I shiver for my smile
inside your smile. I shiver for the necessity of shivering
long overdue, shivers of shivers.
This poem is for the ghazal. This poem is a ghazal
because it’s a world view. We stitch
the stars down to earth now. We stitch the stars deep
inside the soil of us, cells, salt-water
guts. We stitch with hair & wishbones for eyes,
stitch until fingers bleed & then we stitch
on top of the stitches. We taught ourselves to sew. We
taught ourselves out of invisibility
the difference between the shadow cast & the body &
yet part of the body & how
a shadow means a body exists, a body in light. Step in,
dear sisters. Step in.
JENNY ZHANG
“under the chiming bell”
…
the holy don’t need us
wretches of a different order
looking for someone or nothing
I was supposed to be staff
then everything changed
and it didn’t even matter
I was born wrong
will someone tell someone who I am
will someone please please tell me
July 26, 2024
A few poems resonated with me a lot but looking back I couldn’t find them/feel that same way. Poetry is hard to read in compilations
August 29, 2022
The hard part with anthology's is they are entirely subjective to the tastes of the editors. The collection is understandably largely very heavy in topic, fitting completely with the pandemic and the sociopolitical climate in America. Several poems are from a few years ago (such as my personal favorite, "Against Death" by Noor Hindi, which was from 2019). While all the included poems are good, I did not feel the editor's choice to list them alphabetically by author's last name did any favors to the poets or the collection. The first and last poem of an anthology usually tie it all together. This felt more random and scattered as opposed to curated.
That being said, focusing on the pulp of the anthology, highlights were:
"What Would You Ask the Artist?" by Terence Hayes
"Broken Sestina Reaching for Black Joy" by Tiana Clark
"Marriage" by Cathy Linh Che
"Gaslighter" by Kristin Bock
and, of course, "Against Death" by Noor Hindi.
Overall I recommend this collection, on the caveat that it may be more enjoyable to skip the lengthy old white male editor forewords and pick poems at random to read in order to get a fuller experience.
That being said, focusing on the pulp of the anthology, highlights were:
"What Would You Ask the Artist?" by Terence Hayes
"Broken Sestina Reaching for Black Joy" by Tiana Clark
"Marriage" by Cathy Linh Che
"Gaslighter" by Kristin Bock
and, of course, "Against Death" by Noor Hindi.
Overall I recommend this collection, on the caveat that it may be more enjoyable to skip the lengthy old white male editor forewords and pick poems at random to read in order to get a fuller experience.
August 27, 2022
Did you know that this series has been published since 1988? The first editor was John Ashberry. So, this year’s volume is part of a long and respected tradition. Here are many poems to read, think about and enjoy. They are gathered from a variety of sources. An especially nice feature is that there are biographical information and comments by the poets on their poems.
Begin with the interesting forward and then dip in wherever you like. For me, this is a title to savor. I welcome the opportunity to read the works of the many poets with whom I am unfamiliar, interspersed with those I know.
Poetry fans or those who want to expand their horizons will enjoy this book. It will provide hours of thoughtful reading.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this title. All opinions are my own.
Begin with the interesting forward and then dip in wherever you like. For me, this is a title to savor. I welcome the opportunity to read the works of the many poets with whom I am unfamiliar, interspersed with those I know.
Poetry fans or those who want to expand their horizons will enjoy this book. It will provide hours of thoughtful reading.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this title. All opinions are my own.
July 19, 2022
I have read The Best American series intermittently (Short Stories, Essays, Poems), and some of the constraints of the anthology have caused it to not work as well for me as it ought. And here's the constraint: it is alphabetical by author's last name.
As a former MFA student who has attended her fair share of Bread Loafs and AWPs, I have always appreciated the adage that the final poem of the book is the book itself. The first poem is the table of contents. That the putting together of the sequence is as important as each individual poem.
But of course this is a huge task and by having the alphabetizing as a default, the editors have removed the one task that might always improve the volume. I understand they have their reasons, and I respect decisions made by people much smarter than myself, but I also think this constraint has caused each volume of Best American Poetry to only reach the two- or three-star capacity.
Until the one Zapruder edited. I'm only fleetingly familiar with Matthew Zapruder's work, but after reading that welcoming introduction, one that I honestly would love to teach with my older high school students when thinking about poetry, and after seeing what he selected, you can bet I'm going to start becoming more familiar with what he himself writes as well.
Not every poem zinged for me, but more often than not, they did. I don't know if I'm becoming a better reader of poetry or if this year's edition was really just that much better than previous years. I do not mean to bash previous years' editions or editors--so often it is right time, right place. And if I weren't such a steady, heavy reader, I would read one poem an evening, digest it, and let myself read another the next night, instead of going through the whole book in one or two sittings.
There were threads within the volume though--mentions of masks and ICUs and race--all elements that have been at the center of important discussions as of recent. I thought a lot about the "American" aspect of the title--how, really, the anthology just asks--what, that the authors be American? that they be American publications?--but in some senses, many of these poems spoke to what it means to be American in these last few years. What we are listening to and not listening to. In many senses, this anthology has done a better job representing what it means to exist at this point in time than any other year I can remember, and Zapruder has selected some astonishingly smart and beautiful poems to do that. The work of this anthology is showing in an absolutely good way.
In many ways, I was sad it was over and I felt hungry to be in attendance to some kind of panel where five random poets from the anthology would speak to what it means to be a poet in America today. There are a lot of things I love about the Best American anthologies and that is how they not only include that brief bio, but they also include the gestation of the poem (and a list of journals where they came from, allowing other poets to keep an eye on where they send their own work). These explorations in the back of the book become just as much a treasure as the poems themselves.
I reviewed this copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Scribner and NetGalley for making that possible! Thanks, David Lehman and Matthew Zapruder and every poet in this book (and every editor of every journal) for all of your hard work.
As a former MFA student who has attended her fair share of Bread Loafs and AWPs, I have always appreciated the adage that the final poem of the book is the book itself. The first poem is the table of contents. That the putting together of the sequence is as important as each individual poem.
But of course this is a huge task and by having the alphabetizing as a default, the editors have removed the one task that might always improve the volume. I understand they have their reasons, and I respect decisions made by people much smarter than myself, but I also think this constraint has caused each volume of Best American Poetry to only reach the two- or three-star capacity.
Until the one Zapruder edited. I'm only fleetingly familiar with Matthew Zapruder's work, but after reading that welcoming introduction, one that I honestly would love to teach with my older high school students when thinking about poetry, and after seeing what he selected, you can bet I'm going to start becoming more familiar with what he himself writes as well.
Not every poem zinged for me, but more often than not, they did. I don't know if I'm becoming a better reader of poetry or if this year's edition was really just that much better than previous years. I do not mean to bash previous years' editions or editors--so often it is right time, right place. And if I weren't such a steady, heavy reader, I would read one poem an evening, digest it, and let myself read another the next night, instead of going through the whole book in one or two sittings.
There were threads within the volume though--mentions of masks and ICUs and race--all elements that have been at the center of important discussions as of recent. I thought a lot about the "American" aspect of the title--how, really, the anthology just asks--what, that the authors be American? that they be American publications?--but in some senses, many of these poems spoke to what it means to be American in these last few years. What we are listening to and not listening to. In many senses, this anthology has done a better job representing what it means to exist at this point in time than any other year I can remember, and Zapruder has selected some astonishingly smart and beautiful poems to do that. The work of this anthology is showing in an absolutely good way.
In many ways, I was sad it was over and I felt hungry to be in attendance to some kind of panel where five random poets from the anthology would speak to what it means to be a poet in America today. There are a lot of things I love about the Best American anthologies and that is how they not only include that brief bio, but they also include the gestation of the poem (and a list of journals where they came from, allowing other poets to keep an eye on where they send their own work). These explorations in the back of the book become just as much a treasure as the poems themselves.
I reviewed this copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Scribner and NetGalley for making that possible! Thanks, David Lehman and Matthew Zapruder and every poet in this book (and every editor of every journal) for all of your hard work.
July 9, 2022
Thank you to NetGalley & Scribner for a free eARC in exchange for my honest review.
I thought this collection of poetry was decent. Some of the poems were more interesting than others, but the collection felt very one note. The anthology poems did not jump out to me and I did not read any that I would use with my students.
Overall, the poems were depressing. I may need to wait to try more poetry further out from the pandemic, but I don't think that is the only reason it was depressing.
My favorite poems were: Felicia Zamora's "Chris Martin Sings "Shiver" and I shiver: A Poem for Madame Vice President," Alina Stefanescu's "Little Time," and Louise Gluck's "Second Wind."
They were really good, I just have read better poem anthologies. Also, a formatting thing: I wish the author bios had been near the poems themselves, so I could have the background on the poet as I read ( This is partially an ebook issue, but I wouldn't want to keep flipping back and forth in a physical book either)
I thought this collection of poetry was decent. Some of the poems were more interesting than others, but the collection felt very one note. The anthology poems did not jump out to me and I did not read any that I would use with my students.
Overall, the poems were depressing. I may need to wait to try more poetry further out from the pandemic, but I don't think that is the only reason it was depressing.
My favorite poems were: Felicia Zamora's "Chris Martin Sings "Shiver" and I shiver: A Poem for Madame Vice President," Alina Stefanescu's "Little Time," and Louise Gluck's "Second Wind."
They were really good, I just have read better poem anthologies. Also, a formatting thing: I wish the author bios had been near the poems themselves, so I could have the background on the poet as I read ( This is partially an ebook issue, but I wouldn't want to keep flipping back and forth in a physical book either)
June 18, 2022
Anytime the introduction to an anthology captures my attention, I know that I am going to enjoy the text. Of all of the TBAPs published since its inception, this issue may be the one that best reflects the year during which the texts were penned. The selections were timely, poignant, and powerful. The range was thoughtful, and the representation was broad. I’ll be ordering a text set of these for my classroom!
June 26, 2022
Some of the formatting did not work well here as an ebook. Most of these poems did not seem like choices I would have made for a best poetry anthology, but as always poetry is tuned to an individuals tastes. Someone thought these poems should be here, so they are. None of them really touched or moved me, though some were interesting reads. Maybe I’m struggling with poetry since the pandemic started.
May 6, 2023
This collection showed me that I much prefer to read a volume of one poet’s work and get into their rhythm and style. This collection of vastly different poems just didn’t appeal to me.
November 26, 2023
So much good poems here, flipping thru pages now and again these last several months, reading some of them never, some of them once and some of them over and over and over...
here are four
that got in my door,
may make you snore,
now no more
from me.
Time to take it back
to the library.
SEA: NIGHT SURFING IN BOLINAS
Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting
moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette against
detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the falling *
swell explodes upward • as the underwave blows through it • a flash of visibility quickly
• snuffed by night • the surf fizzling and churning • remitting itself to darkness •
with a violent stertor • in competition with no other sounds
paddling through dicey backwash • the break zone of • waist-high NW swell •
as into a wall of obsidian • indistinguishable from night sky • diving under, paddling fast
• and before I sit • one arm over my board • I duck and • listen a moment
underwater • to the alien soundscape • not daytime's clicks and whines of • ship
engines and sonar • but a low-spectrum hum • the acoustic signature of fish, squid, •
crustaceans rising en masse • to feed at the surface I feel • an eerie peacefulness veined with fear
after twenty minutes the eyes • adjust, behind the hand dragging through water •
bioluminescent trails • not enough light • to spot boils • or flaws in nearing •
waves appear even larger • closing-in fast • then five short strokes into a dimensionless
• peeler, two S-shaped turns, the • kick out, and from shore • your shout
it is cowardice that turns my eyes • from the now-empty beach • for with you I
became • aware of an exceptional chance • I don't believe in • objective description,
only • this mess, experience, the perceived • world sometimes shared • in which life
doesn't • endure, only • the void endures • but your vitality stired it • leaving
trails of excitation • I've risen from the bottom of • myself to find • I exist in you
• exist in me and • against odds I've known even rapture, • rare event, • which
calls for • but one witness
- Forest Gander
QUOTING THE BIBLE
Tonight I'm thinking about Jesus
which isn't remarkable for most people
on Christmas
but it is for me.
Which means that I'm really
thinking about the light
from Seamus Heaney's phone
when he texted his wife
don't be afraid seconds before
he left his body behind. Don't be afraid,
I tell my son as I buckle his seatbelt, don't be afraid
I place a green dinosaur
mask on his face,
don't be afraid, I spray
his toddler hands with
disinfectant don't be afraid
I hold him close and walk away from
other mothers singing
their own version of
don't be afraid
I say it so often
I wonder if my son
thinks the words
are a series of sounds I hum
when I'm around him
to get through the day
more comfort
than language, more
shape than mouth,
more memory than body,
more mother than person.
Luisa Muradyan
CAPITALISM
the best thing I can do for my momma is stay out her pocket this gets truer the older I get but it's been true since I got here at the grocery store check out I suck my teeth and curse the air
what the hell did I buy my voice almost as sharp as my mother's
except everything in this cart's for me I pick up my privilege and push past her shadow where she still stands scouring the receipt for error
double scan a missed discount the usual trickery
in high school when they ask what I want to do when I grow up
I say not starve and mean it I don't dream of excess or labor my momma works hard her daddy worked hard
all my ancestors were worked hard in boston the white teacher
at the white school in the white neighborhood where the black women
hold the little white hands of bright eyed blonde children like work visas
looks dead in my face and says her grandfather worked hard and that's why we have that house on martha's vineyard
in her wedding photos she smiles in her ivory dress
with her ivory beaux and the white pillars
of her grandfather's white house rise up to frame them
- Brionne Janae
SECOND WIND
I think this is my second wind,
my sister said. Very
like the first, but that
ended, I remember. Oh
what a wind it was, so powerful
the leaves fell off the trees.
I don't think so,
I said. Well, they were
on the ground, my sister said. Remember running around the park in Cedarhurst,
jumping on the piles, destroying them?
You never jumped, my mother said.
You were good girls; you stayed where I put you.
Not in our heads, my sister said. I put
my arms around her. What
a brave sister you are,
I said.
- Louise Gluck
here are four
that got in my door,
may make you snore,
now no more
from me.
Time to take it back
to the library.
SEA: NIGHT SURFING IN BOLINAS
Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting
moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette against
detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the falling *
swell explodes upward • as the underwave blows through it • a flash of visibility quickly
• snuffed by night • the surf fizzling and churning • remitting itself to darkness •
with a violent stertor • in competition with no other sounds
paddling through dicey backwash • the break zone of • waist-high NW swell •
as into a wall of obsidian • indistinguishable from night sky • diving under, paddling fast
• and before I sit • one arm over my board • I duck and • listen a moment
underwater • to the alien soundscape • not daytime's clicks and whines of • ship
engines and sonar • but a low-spectrum hum • the acoustic signature of fish, squid, •
crustaceans rising en masse • to feed at the surface I feel • an eerie peacefulness veined with fear
after twenty minutes the eyes • adjust, behind the hand dragging through water •
bioluminescent trails • not enough light • to spot boils • or flaws in nearing •
waves appear even larger • closing-in fast • then five short strokes into a dimensionless
• peeler, two S-shaped turns, the • kick out, and from shore • your shout
it is cowardice that turns my eyes • from the now-empty beach • for with you I
became • aware of an exceptional chance • I don't believe in • objective description,
only • this mess, experience, the perceived • world sometimes shared • in which life
doesn't • endure, only • the void endures • but your vitality stired it • leaving
trails of excitation • I've risen from the bottom of • myself to find • I exist in you
• exist in me and • against odds I've known even rapture, • rare event, • which
calls for • but one witness
- Forest Gander
QUOTING THE BIBLE
Tonight I'm thinking about Jesus
which isn't remarkable for most people
on Christmas
but it is for me.
Which means that I'm really
thinking about the light
from Seamus Heaney's phone
when he texted his wife
don't be afraid seconds before
he left his body behind. Don't be afraid,
I tell my son as I buckle his seatbelt, don't be afraid
I place a green dinosaur
mask on his face,
don't be afraid, I spray
his toddler hands with
disinfectant don't be afraid
I hold him close and walk away from
other mothers singing
their own version of
don't be afraid
I say it so often
I wonder if my son
thinks the words
are a series of sounds I hum
when I'm around him
to get through the day
more comfort
than language, more
shape than mouth,
more memory than body,
more mother than person.
Luisa Muradyan
CAPITALISM
the best thing I can do for my momma is stay out her pocket this gets truer the older I get but it's been true since I got here at the grocery store check out I suck my teeth and curse the air
what the hell did I buy my voice almost as sharp as my mother's
except everything in this cart's for me I pick up my privilege and push past her shadow where she still stands scouring the receipt for error
double scan a missed discount the usual trickery
in high school when they ask what I want to do when I grow up
I say not starve and mean it I don't dream of excess or labor my momma works hard her daddy worked hard
all my ancestors were worked hard in boston the white teacher
at the white school in the white neighborhood where the black women
hold the little white hands of bright eyed blonde children like work visas
looks dead in my face and says her grandfather worked hard and that's why we have that house on martha's vineyard
in her wedding photos she smiles in her ivory dress
with her ivory beaux and the white pillars
of her grandfather's white house rise up to frame them
- Brionne Janae
SECOND WIND
I think this is my second wind,
my sister said. Very
like the first, but that
ended, I remember. Oh
what a wind it was, so powerful
the leaves fell off the trees.
I don't think so,
I said. Well, they were
on the ground, my sister said. Remember running around the park in Cedarhurst,
jumping on the piles, destroying them?
You never jumped, my mother said.
You were good girls; you stayed where I put you.
Not in our heads, my sister said. I put
my arms around her. What
a brave sister you are,
I said.
- Louise Gluck
January 29, 2023
4.3/5 This is a strong collection of poetry that possesses a variety of forms and themes and allowed me to discover many new poets whose work I will now follow, such as Jennifer Chang, Safia Elhillo, and Li-Young Lee. I also greatly enjoyed the introductions to the book written by Lehman and guess editor Zapruder. As this book is one of the first Best American Poetry editions in which a lot of the poems within the edition were written during the pandemic, Zapruder's introduction was able to remind us of poetry's imaginative power and ability to be "responsible to others and the world but also feel free." He said "the poems painfully reminded me that everything is alive," and I saw that lifeline through the many elegies, the learning of new languages, like flower names, and the close attention paid to every breath taken, at the core of most poems. The reason why I fail to give this anthology a full five stars is that I felt that some poems were rather too straightforward or surface-level explorations of topics and were contradictory to what I love about poetry (nuance, imagery, cutting emotion). In particular, I had trouble getting through Jason Koo's seventeen-page poem that felt inconclusive and rambly.
January 21, 2023
Meh. But that's usually the case with the BAP for me. Some hits, some misses, some headscratchers, and, to be fair, some that just are not my cup of tea but obviously have merit. As usual, Lehman kicks things off with yet another long and windy introduction, followed by (as usual) by a considerably shorter introduction from the guest editor (Matthew Zapruder). This particular edition has (to be expected) a lot Covid impacted poems. Poems I liked: Inaugural by Jericho Brown, Advice for Pliny the Elder, Big Daddy of Mansplainers by Tishani Doshi, Final Poem for My Father Misnamed In My Mouth by Philip B. Williams, My Father’s Mustache by Ada Limón, Quoting the Bible by Luisa Muradyan, Little Time by Alina Stefanescu (most interesting voice IMHO), Best Friend Ballad by Sharon Olds, and The Remaining Facts, by Michael Robins. I'm sure there a few I've missed, but most of the above left me wanting to read some more work from these poets. Incomprehensibly, Zapruder indulgently included a 15 page bad rant/poem that left me wishing that those wasted pages could have been better farmed out to 10 or so other poems & poets.
October 19, 2023
I think my first criticism with this poem was the choice to intentionally include poems that referenced contemporary technology, especially as it related to the covid years. I know these poems reflect the time in which they were written, but (with the exception of a select few) reading poems that referenced algorithms or videos on phones kind of took me out of it. I'm not saying it's impossible to reference current tech and make it work (some very much did), but often it felt contrived. I suppose I like poetry to be timeless to some degree, and references to things like covid or zoom rooms immediately date the piece.
That aside, the poems in this collection were generally very good and offered a broad range of content and form, all from talented poets. It's hard to summarize my thoughts about a collection of poetry from different authors, but here are a few favorites:
Raymond Antrobus, "Text and Image" (this one is about current tech!)
Camille T. Dungy, "Let Me"
Brionne Janae, "Capitalism"
Li-Young Lee, "Big Clock"
Dianne Seuss, "Modern Poetry"
Ocean Vuong, "Reasons for Staying"
That aside, the poems in this collection were generally very good and offered a broad range of content and form, all from talented poets. It's hard to summarize my thoughts about a collection of poetry from different authors, but here are a few favorites:
Raymond Antrobus, "Text and Image" (this one is about current tech!)
Camille T. Dungy, "Let Me"
Brionne Janae, "Capitalism"
Li-Young Lee, "Big Clock"
Dianne Seuss, "Modern Poetry"
Ocean Vuong, "Reasons for Staying"
October 7, 2022
Poetry and I had a falling out about 25 years ago and we haven't patched things back up since.
Still.
Every once in awhile, something falls into my lap that makes me wonder if I shouldn't apologize and try again.
I did not read all the poems in this book. I just read one, the one that I am giving five stars and the rest of the book gets to enjoy the high rating in relation.
"Advice for Pliny the Elder, Big Daddy of Mansplainers" by Tishani Doshi, who is a poet, author, journalist, and dancer, is one of those poems that makes me want to rekindle my relationship with poetry.
Not only is the title a delight, but the poem, shaped like a vessel, speaks to anyone with a liberal arts degree. Or probably a medical degree because don't physicians also have PtheE shoved down their throats? But it also speaks to people who are just trying to be and who can appreciate and even agree with the thoughts of others but, really, calm down, Pliny and everyone who thinks he made all the rules.
Everything about this poem makes me feel good.
Still.
Every once in awhile, something falls into my lap that makes me wonder if I shouldn't apologize and try again.
I did not read all the poems in this book. I just read one, the one that I am giving five stars and the rest of the book gets to enjoy the high rating in relation.
"Advice for Pliny the Elder, Big Daddy of Mansplainers" by Tishani Doshi, who is a poet, author, journalist, and dancer, is one of those poems that makes me want to rekindle my relationship with poetry.
Not only is the title a delight, but the poem, shaped like a vessel, speaks to anyone with a liberal arts degree. Or probably a medical degree because don't physicians also have PtheE shoved down their throats? But it also speaks to people who are just trying to be and who can appreciate and even agree with the thoughts of others but, really, calm down, Pliny and everyone who thinks he made all the rules.
Everything about this poem makes me feel good.
Read
July 4, 2023Lots of poems about America. Favorites include:
“What the Dead Can Do” by Oliver Baez Bendorf
“Proof” by James Cagney
“Outer Lands” by Bill Carty
“Let Me” by Camille T. Dungy (“Maybe the dream I still can’t get over is that, so far, I have made it out alive.”)
“Second Wind” by Louise Gluck
“Into the Mountains” by April Goldman
“The Life of a Writer” by Jalynn Harris (“the life of a writer is desire”)
“Myths About Trees” by Julia Anna Morrison (“I don’t know if I can do this again, with anyone”)
“After Graduate School” by Valencia Robin
“Departure” by Erika L. Sanchez (“I held my grief like two limp tulips”)
“Modern Poetry” by Diane Seuss (mentions Kalamazoo)
”Widowing” by Prageeta Sharma (“so obvious how you lived inside yourself with a kind of agony”)
“The Infant’s eyes” by Bianca Stone (“and realized I’d never been looked at like that before”)
“Reasons for Staying” by Ocean Vuong (“Because this body is my last address”)
“What the Dead Can Do” by Oliver Baez Bendorf
“Proof” by James Cagney
“Outer Lands” by Bill Carty
“Let Me” by Camille T. Dungy (“Maybe the dream I still can’t get over is that, so far, I have made it out alive.”)
“Second Wind” by Louise Gluck
“Into the Mountains” by April Goldman
“The Life of a Writer” by Jalynn Harris (“the life of a writer is desire”)
“Myths About Trees” by Julia Anna Morrison (“I don’t know if I can do this again, with anyone”)
“After Graduate School” by Valencia Robin
“Departure” by Erika L. Sanchez (“I held my grief like two limp tulips”)
“Modern Poetry” by Diane Seuss (mentions Kalamazoo)
”Widowing” by Prageeta Sharma (“so obvious how you lived inside yourself with a kind of agony”)
“The Infant’s eyes” by Bianca Stone (“and realized I’d never been looked at like that before”)
“Reasons for Staying” by Ocean Vuong (“Because this body is my last address”)
April 10, 2025
The poetry of this anthology was too easy to criticize. I only truly liked two of them. However, not enough to put their works on my wishlist.
There were poems that were technically interesting or proficient but which I didn't interest me beyond that. There were many poems that seemed to cling to their initial triggers, muddying their beginnings. I felt like saying, "it's okay to let the initial impetus go. Cut it out and get to the meat of the poem." There was also some lack of maturity in terms of subject matter.
Each editor has their own tastes and goals with the BAP they edit. From the variety of journals Zapruder pulled from, one of his was a broad representation rather than focusing on elite journals. I wonder if he also favored younger poets. That said, some old and very established poets (Sharon Olds, Gerald Stern, Charles Simic, Li Young Li) are also represented and I wasn't excited by their poems either.
There were poems that were technically interesting or proficient but which I didn't interest me beyond that. There were many poems that seemed to cling to their initial triggers, muddying their beginnings. I felt like saying, "it's okay to let the initial impetus go. Cut it out and get to the meat of the poem." There was also some lack of maturity in terms of subject matter.
Each editor has their own tastes and goals with the BAP they edit. From the variety of journals Zapruder pulled from, one of his was a broad representation rather than focusing on elite journals. I wonder if he also favored younger poets. That said, some old and very established poets (Sharon Olds, Gerald Stern, Charles Simic, Li Young Li) are also represented and I wasn't excited by their poems either.
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