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2021 reads, #79. This is the fourth of four poetry anthologies I've been reading over the last month, as part of my first-ever explorations this year into the world of formal poetry, and with each volume specifically chosen so that the four added together would give me the broadest overview of the poetry world as possible: first an anthology from Columbia University claiming to represent "the greatest poems of all time" (my review), compiled by aggregating the table of contents of 400 other acad...
About all I want to say about this book is that if this is the best American poetry offers, I'll be reading British poetry or older poetry from now on. Very few poems instilled a sense of calmness and peace. Few dealt with themes of beauty, peacefulness, the sea, flowers, birds, etc. Too much of the content was stressful, and to call some of it poetry stretches the definition. I received an advance review copy through Edelweiss. While the publisher appreciates reviews, they are not required.
There are some excellent poems in this anthology. Excellence is what I expect from a collection of the best. Unfortunately, poetry is highly subjective. I usually find these collections a disappointment, leaning to poetry I consider too dry, too esoteric, and often way too long. The one great exception for me was the 2017 edition, guest edited by Natasha Trethewey. That I gave 5 stars. My personal favorite poems in this collection:Victoria Chang: “Obit [Privacy–died]”Vieve Francis: “The Shore”Ra...
pretty meh. paisley rekdal’s preface was my favorite part of the whole book, which is not a good sign. i think the words “forgive me” appeared in at least three poems- lots of guilt and hand-wringing about contemporary politics. i get the sentiment, but i dunno, i’m just kind of over intellectual lefty new york people bemoaning the state of things. writing a poem about how guilty you feel doesn’t make you any less guilty. it doesn’t really make you sympathetic either.but there was still some goo...
I can't say that this was my favorite collection of poems, but there are some good ones in here. Paisley Rekdal did an admirable job here, but I think we have pretty divergent tastes.
Hmmm. Anthologies like this strike me as the main reason so many Americans say they don't like poetry. Can we please get to a place where our options aren't either self-absorbed, generic Instagram poetry or this? While I did enjoy a few of the poems, so many were the literary equivalent of the art display where someone paints something entirely with pieces of used condoms. Give me Margaret Atwood, Nikky Finney, Langston Hughes... poets who can say something artistically and beautifully, make you...
a wholistic look at the state of the poetry genre! can't wait to read 2021
Rekdal likes the long poem. That's clear. My absolute favorites:Monica Youn "Study of Two Figures (Pasiphae/Sado)"Ilya Kaminsky "In a Time of Piece"Kevin Prufer "Archeology"Some other favorites:William Brewer "Orange"Victoria Chang "Obit [Privacy--died]"Timothy Donnelly "All Through the War"Rachel Eliza Griffiths "Good Mother"Donika Kelly "I Never Figured How to Get Free"Christopher Kempf "After"Jennifer L. Knox "The Gift"Sharon Olds "Hyacinth Aria"Carl Phillips "Something to Believe in"Clare Ro...
I hate "best of" collections and idk why I continue to read them. They're way too subjective and I almost never agree with the choices made by the editors. 0/10 do not recommend.I skimmed the majority of the book. The only two poems I enjoyed were Rachel Eliza Griffiths' "Good Mother" and Kevin Prufer's "Archaeology".
Collections like this are wonderful mix of voices and styles. For me, they lead to a mixed reading experience.Quotes (not formatted)"...the fellowship between people that occurs in language." (xxxiii)"...the pause a kind of gap between what she knew an what the words could do." (Rick Barot, 8)"...where time widens to include more of itself." "I light my heart with so much emptiness there's room here in the dark for everything.""Some days I know the strongest feeling is grief but I believe it mus...
Overall impressions: a narrow selection among magazines, Copper Nickel and Poetry dominant among them; a strong presence of writers of color, but other orthodoxies inform much of the work, the experimentation mild in character, characteristic of the academic/MFA bubble, the subject matter semi-confessional, the politics vaguely liberal in the vein of "human rights" discourse. I've never thought the Lehman anthology ever really represented "the best," being more the product of a mild cronyism, pe...
A strong selection of poems in this year's edition. Guest Editor Paisley Rekdal learned much more toward toward the longer poems, making this edition more reminiscent of that from 2004. As such, I didn't connect with as many of the poems as I'd like. Unlike with that 2004 volume however, here I recognized the excellence of almost every piece, even those I didn't love by the end. It's a worthy edition to the series and quite fulfilling to read. Worth the money.
This year’s collection of poems just wasn’t as impactful or interesting as years past.
Any collection of poetry by different authors will of course mean that the individual poem will vary in their impact on the reader, especially with poetry being such a subjective experience. I’m always satisfied if half the selections in such a work move me in some way, by image, language, sound, etc. I’ve had mixed experience with the Best American Poetry series, but this year’s (2020) is one of the best I’ve read, with only a small handful of poems falling into the “didn’t care for” category.
After I learned about the flagrant nepotism in last year's edition, I was disappointed, but not shocked. I have not read a lot of Rekdal's work but I have enjoyed what I read and looked forward to reading the anthology she curated. I have discovered that while I may enjoy a writer, our tastes may not align. While last year's collection was certainly navel-gazing, this doesn't have as much of that quality; but, I believe I enjoyed more of the poems in last year's collection. Few in this book were...
When it comes to a collection like this, coming up with one overarching rating can be a challenge. At the end of the day, I can evaluate this from two different perspectives: how much did I personally enjoy this vs. how "good" it was at doing what it set out to do. The Best American Poetry is released annually with a different guest editor each year. In the introduction to this anthology, Paisley Rekdal addresses the hows and whys of the curation process, and I think that this was very well done...
I sometimes struggled to get into this volume of poetry because so many of the poems were so long. However, the payoff was that I read poems I often wouldn't read, and the poems I loved were particularly lovely. Susan Leslie Moore's "Night of the Living"; Sharon Olds's "Hyacinth Aria"; Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad's "Isfahan, 2010"; Robert Wrigley's "Machinery" and Matthew Zapruder's "My Life" were some favorites.
Loved this collection. A lot of longer poems like people said but I didn’t mind. The poems touched on a lot of cultural, societal, political, and social issues in meaningful and interesting ways. Of course, I didn’t love every poem but that’s not quite the point of these collections regardless. I feel this was an adept overview of American poetry in 2020. It certainly covered what it was meant to cover. Notable Stand outs:All Through the War - Timothy Donnelly To X - Julian GewirtzSex - Christin...
I'm not a fan of the long poem, especially in digital format. It seemed like at least 85% of these meandered on and on and tried to be both epic and topical, but I just didn't have the patience to engage with this collection right now.
Overall, I would give this collection a B- average (technically an 81.7% 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.This had very few super high highs, so it's tempting to put this at a C+ level, but it still evens out to a decent collection. It is on the lower...