The title seems accurate. These are some good poems. My favorites were Margaret Atwood's "Tell Me Something Good," Michael Ondaatje's "November" (which made me cry), and Padraig O Tuama's "Do You Believe in God?" The rest are also good.

Big thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this collection!

An incredibly poignant, timely, and arresting collection of poetry from so many of our preeminent poets. Through an interesting variety of forms, these poets grapple with current events and universal truths, capturing through beautiful writing a sort of time capsule of America in 2025.

As always, The Best American Poetry anthology never fails to stun--2025 blew me out of the water. I am learning how to read poetry, and will say that this anthology provides a good survey of contemporary poets. Many of my favorites in this collection were politically inclined, and served as a message or warning. "The Ring" is one such poem. A longer one, but full of rich and vivid detail that kept me reading, and My Kafka Prose poem was so cheeky and brilliant. Metatextual in the best way. Highly recommend this anthology. Thanks to the publisher and NEtgalley for the ARC.

I’ve been hit and miss with this series “The Best American Poetry” for some time, which should come as no surprise for this type of work. Sometimes one’s taste lines up with the guest editor, sometimes it doesn’t. This year’s, 2025, is somewhere in the middle of my experience. Some years I’m just nowhere near in line with the editor; some years we’re nearly completely in sync. This year I didn’t actively dislike any of the poems, or wonder why there were here, but there weren’t a lot that captivated me.

Part of that is the alignment issue. A lot of these poems were too prose-y for me. Not in the prose-poem vein; I love me a nicely lyrical, condensed prose poem. But in the plain language, sentence structure, and form way. I like to think I mostly understand poems I read, but I mostly consider that a luxury. I come to poetry to be startled by the language, by the metaphors, by the juxtapositions. And that just didn’t happen too often here for me. I didn’t get mesmerized by musicality or stimulated by an unexpected metaphor or captured by an image that etched itself into my brain. Well, technically I did a few times, but not what I’d prefer for an anthology. Which left me frequently with a “that was OK” response. It’s a decent enough collection, but if I were to recommend poetry to someone from this past year, I’d start with some single-poet collections first. That said, as is always the case with anthologies, there is always something that catches your eye or ear or heart. Here are a few of my favorites:

“Nicholson Bake and I” by Catherine Barnett: there’s a lovely charm to this, and a nice wry humor which you think will continue throughout, but the poem bends unexpectedly (there’s that surprise I enjoy) and has a wonderful close

“Fable” by Andrea Cohen: I dare anyone to read this to the end and not smile/chuckle. A plain poem but a wisely cute one

“Thought a Rarity on Paper” by Billy Collins: Your usual deceptively complex Collins poem that uses a conversational tone and style but peppered with unexpected analogies and images that are easily understood and perfect in their context and again, as is typical for me with a Collins’ poem, it closes strongly

“Godzilla Meets the Beast” by Jose Padua, a fun poem full of allusions and humor that cannot obscure the yearning heart at the end

I finished this anthology over a month ago and have sat with it for some time. I read it shortly before the death of Andrea Gibson, but they were still on my mind reading it. Of course, no "best of" is actually going to be some objective capital B BEST-- these are the poems that most moved the editor and I feel that he did a wonderful job of including an incredibly diverse group of poets and subjects. I realize that poetry is an amorphous concept, different folks expect different things out of their poetry. I prefer poems that play with words, both the phonetic experience of speaking or hearing them and the surprising use of them as metaphor, in unexpected use. This was not a group of poems that loved words. These poems are ideas and vignettes, some metaphors but they were fairly blunt. I didn't find much lyrical language here or lines that made me stop reading to roll the language in my mouth. And that is fine, but if a poem could have been an essay but was written broken into lines without proper grammar, than it probably isn't going to blow me away. That personal preference doesn't take away from the power of the poems that were in here. So many important issues were tackled and I am better for having read it.

Thank you to David Lehman, Scribner, and Netgalley for the ARC in exchanged for my unbiased review.

As you might guess, this is a wide-ranging anthology, covering a variety of tones, formats, and styles. It’s not strictly an environmental collection, but some elements of nature appear in many if not most of the poems. Sometimes it’s just a brief, poetic mention of magic or grief. Others reflect these crisis-filled times more directly, like “Climate Anxiety” by Patricia Davis-Muffett. The collection feels a bit more Western than Nature Matters (it does focus on American poetry, after all), but every poem lives up to its “best of” designation.

“The Best American Poetry 2025,” edited by Terence Winch, is and continues to be exactly what’s printed on the tin. The prestigious anthology series has well-earned its reputation for compiling a diverse cross-section of the American poetic zeitgeist each year, but in 2025 the editorial hand of Terence Winch stands out as particularly discerning: poems of death, sex, image, abstraction, moral imperative & aesthetic swirl, ghosts and the supernatural, the mundane and the sublime, the domestic and the public. There is no other way to paint a picture of the breadth and diversity of the great tradition which is “American Poetry”.

In his foreword, David Lehman remarks of the anthology as a form: “if the editors do their job well, few readers will admire all the poems equally. That is part of the Plan.” This diversity does not come at the cost of quality. Every reader of poetry (and many new to the genre) will be able to find something in this collection that moves or calls to them, but perhaps more importantly, they’ll be exposed to The Best of what does not resonate. The Best American Poetry Anthology’s strength is that it is a house of both mirrors and windows: of both familiar reflections and portals into other experiences and perspective. Exactly as poetry ought to be.

An excellent look at the world of poetry today.Wonderful poets to be discovered emotional dark moving poems.A book to pick up flip through pick a poem and enjoy. #netgalley#scribner.

Thank you Netgalley, Scribner, David Lehman, and Terence Winch for sending me this advanced review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a hard book for me to get through. It's fantastic in every way, but most of the poems were a bit on the darker side.

There was so many poems about what's going on in the world. Racism, climate change, politics, anxiety and other things with a similar feeling were just a few that were touched on. The amount of raw emotion, fear, and anxiety were a bit overwhelming at times. The quality of the writing was absolutely top notch, and the subjects were things we all need to read about from time to time. We need to see and acknowledge the darkness, because without it there is no balance.

This is a must read, but please make sure you are in a good headspace before diving in.

This collection is an excellent way to feel the pulse of the current poetry landscape. It introduced me to so many brilliant new-to-me poets, and I was thrilled to recognize some familiar pens (Margaret Atwood!). I'd highly recommend this collection to anyone trying to "get into' reading poetry--these poems feel approachable and engaging.

This is a strong collection of modern poems. A well curated variety of themes, moods, styles, and voices. This is a good resource for poetry students to see what is currently being chosen for publication.