Status Updates From The Best American Poetry 20...

I am flying through this one. So many good poems, a few great ones. Overall, most of the poems in this edition at least are interesting enough, work from a form to content standpoint, and make sense without needing to read an obscure footnote in an academic journal about Ancient Roman fabrics.

So far, 2003 if much better than BAP 2004. A massive improvement. This motivates me to keep reading the entire series.

Already a massive improvement over BAP 2003. Komunyakaa expresses many of the same concerns/thoughts that I have about today's poetry. I think that this quote from his introduction sums it up nicely: "[...] any experimentation not in service of meaning is anti-poetry." This can be argued of course, but I have thought about this, or at least in shades, throughout my mission to read the entire BAP series this year.

"No one has made
the art by which one makes the works
of art. Each one who speaks speaks
as a convocation. We live as councils
of ghosts. It is not "human genius"
that makes us human, but an old love,
an old intelligence of the heart
we gather to us from the world,
from the creatures, from the angels
of inspiration, from the dead." - Wendell Berry, Some Further words

"No one has made
the art by which one makes the works
of art. Each one who speaks speaks
as a convocation. We live as councils
of ghosts. It is not "human genius"
that makes us human, but an old love,
an old intelligence of the heart
we gather to us from the world,
from the creatures, from the angels
of inspiration, from the dead."