Best American Poets Series on World of Poets.com
About the Best American Poets Series

    Excerpted From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The Best American Poetry series consists of books annually published, each with poems from 75
    authors who, in the opinion of the guest editors, represent the best American poetry published in a
    12-month period.


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

    A compendium for the first decade of the series has also been published, The Best of the Best
    American Poetry 1988-1997, guest edited by literary critic Harold Bloom, who selected what he
    regarded as the 75 best poems from the previous 10 anthologies. Bloom excoriated the 1996 issue
    of the series, with poems compiled by guest editor Adrienne Rich, and he refused to include any of
    Rich's selections in Best of the Best, although Lehman disagreed with that decision. Bloom asserted
    that Rich had selected poems based on the "race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, and
    political purpose of the would-be poet" rather than on aesthetic merit. Lehman said a number of
    Rich's selections would have met Bloom's criteria.[2]

    Rules and process

    In his foreword to the first book in the series, in 1988, Lehman laid out these rules for the series,
    which John Ashbery helped him develop:

    Lehman would select a prominent poet each year as guest editor Each year's new guest editor
    would select the poems Each year's anthology would have poems from the previous calendar year
    (the 1988 anthology, for example, would include poems published in 1987) There would be 50 to 75
    poems in each annual anthology (in fact, there have always been 75 poems) The guest editor could
    select as many as three poems by an individual poet (in fact, extremely few poets have appeared
    more than once in the same year through the 2006 edition).

    Poets are asked to submit brief biographical information and, at their option, they may write a bit
    about the poem chosen ("its form or its occasion or the method of composition or any other feature
    worth remarking on" — page x), but this is entirely optional.

    The poems could come from magazines, including large circulation periodicals and small presses, and
    even books by individual poets For poems that appeared in the past but were reprinted in a
    magazine during the previous calendar year, Lehman decided to have no rule: "To such questions,
    the anthologist's ever-ready response is: you just play it by ear."  Foreign poets residing in the
    United States, "especially in cases where the poet has come to seem a vital presence in a particular
    American community" are eligible to appear, and so John Ash, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott
    all made it into the 1988 edition.

    Lehman wrote that he set some tasks for himself as general editor:

    Maintain continuity from year to year
    Enforcing "such rules as there are"
    Help the guest editor, in particular by helping find poetry for the guest editor to look over
    Pick the guest editor

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


    Critical reception of the series

    According to an article on the Academy of American Poets Web site, "these anthologies seem to
    capture the zeitgeist of the current attitudes in American poetry" and "provide a bird's-eye view of
    the breadth of American poetry."[1]

    Criticisms of the series and its editors are that their selections and assessments exclude
    experimental poets, lack diversity, and ally too closely to poetry's "old guard".[1]

    In The Best American Poetry 1992, Lehman wrote in the Foreword, "The best anthologies are the
    ones that live up to their names. Each of the five distinguished poets who have served as editors of
    The Best American Poetry — John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, and this year
    Charles Simic — has insisted on excellence as the paramount criterion in the selection process."[4]

    Questions about fairness

    In The Best American Poetry 1992, Lehman wrote in the Foreword, "The best anthologies are the
    ones that live up to their names. Each of the five distinguished poets who have served as editors of
    The Best American Poetry — John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, and this year
    Charles Simic — has insisted on excellence as the paramount criterion in the selection process."[5]


    Notes

    ^ a b c [1]Academy of American Poets Web site, Web page/article titled "Great Anthology: Best
    American Poetry Series", no byline, accessed January 21, 2006
    ^
    ^ Lehman, David, Foreword, The Best American Poetry 1992, 1992, page x
    ^ Lehman, David, Foreword, The Best American Poetry 1992, 1992, page x
    ^ Lehman, David, Foreword, The Best American Poetry 1992, 1992, page x