I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Loved this collection! Elaine Equi did such an amazing job pulling together a collection of poems that felt so unique individually, but still held together as a collection. I met some new poets I was unfamiliar with, and appreciated some different styles I might not typically gravitate to. Going on year three of a pandemic, it was interesting to see how that affected the poems in this collection. What a wonderful snapshot of the time we're living in. Loved it!

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

The Best American Poetry 2023 (Scribner) celebrates contemporary poetry with an eclectic and accomplished set list of poets. Founded and edited by David Lehman, with guest editing this year by sensational poet Elaine Equi, filtering poetry through experienced, diverse lenses is helpful. But the inclusion of increasingly tender, exploratory, and...varied writing so that the general public who is less inclined to pick up a poetry book is able to be introduced to a greater range of authors is the true wonder of the series altogether.

Special thanks to Scribner, NetGalley, David Lehman, and Elaine Equi for the eArc.

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

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

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

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

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

I loved this collection & found so many new favourite poems I can’t stop thinking about. I felt moved, I felt calmed, I felt seen, I felt. I discovered poets whose work I wish to explore in more depth.

it’s worth noting that while I found this to be an anthology that genuinely has something for everyone, this does mean there are poems that won’t resonate with every reader. that said, I will definitely be reading some of the past year anthologies & likely recommending the series to anyone looking to start reading contemporary poetry. 3.5 stars

I always look forward to the Best American Poetry anthologies and was thrilled to receive an eARC for the 2023 edition.

This is a stacked TOC. With pieces from Marianne Chan, Victoria Chang, Kwame Dawes, Ada Limon, and Alex Dimitrov (to name only a few) my expectations were high and I was not disappointed. From identity to isolation to reflections on society, there is something for every reader in this collection. And while I loved the selections from poets I know and love well, I also really enjoyed finding "new" poets whose work I will explore. As with any anthology, some piece will speak more to personal preference than others, but overall, this is a solid grouping and one I will reach to again.

Big thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

A great collection of poetry from 2023! The variety in prose, poetry, and some hybrid works is enjoyable and kept me interested throughout. My favorite poems are: "The Years" by Alex Dimitrov, "I Ask That I Do Not Die" by Ilya Kaminsky, "Hooky" by Ada Limon, "Film Theory" by Xan Phillips, and "These Squatting Girls In Spandex" by Amanda Smeltz.

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

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

As with any anthology, there will be different 'hit/miss' rates given each reader. Most of the poems were a 'hit' for me personally, though there were a few longer poems that I understood conceptually but did not relish. The editor has taken a strong hand in selecting these poems, as many seem to reflect her own taste, which may, again, not align with individual readers. I will be picking this up for the library as it is a useful resource for teachers looking to find new and engaging poems for students.

As a growing fan of poetry, I was thrilled to read Elaine Equi’s take on the poetry which best represents 2023, a year that, despite being only halfway done, has been teeming with events and emotions worth discussing. The Best American Poetry 2023 was a pleasant collection, though I may argue that it relies too heavily on the introductory essays by both Equi and series editor David Lehman. I would suggest that readers definitely read both essays before reading the collection; however, for readers like myself who often skip into the poems, you may be lacking important context on the collection’s structure and content.
Some standout pieces (in my opinion) included:
- Kameryn Alexa Carter’s “Antediluvian”
- Herbert Gold’s “Other News on Page 24”
- Matthew Zapruder’s “The Empty Grave of Zsa Zsa Gabor”

Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this lovely collection!

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for.the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Sept 5th.

Short poems reign supreme in the newest edition of Best American Poetry, pithy statements that pack a punch. The shortness of breath captures the urgency of our current age, each moment counted and capitalized, each stolen breath a precious moment to hold against time. I greatly enjoyed it!

I look forward to this anthology of poetry every year, thank you! As in every other year, there were poems I loved, poems that don't speak to me, and the opportunity to discover poets previously unknown to me.

While the collection contains well-crafted poems from a structural standpoint, it lacks the overall passion that previous "Best American Poetry" collections have had.

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

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

Sample poem from this book:

TONY TRIGILIO
The Steeplejack

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

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

from Marsh Hawk Review

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

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

I read a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.