Best American Poetry 2016

Obviously, after reading this collection, 2016 was a great year for poetry. Best of American Poetry 2016 opens with an introduction by series editor David Lehman that is both informative and a very helpful guide to this volume. The editor of this volume, poet Edward Hirsch, has chosen from a wide range of works, from established poets such as Jorie Graham and Philip Levine to other poets less well-known (at least to me) allowing me to enjoy some of my favorite poets as well as discover new ones. I enjoy this series in general for this reason. So many poems are published this year, it’s hard to keep up and this series offers at least one support.

Not all the poems seemed to me equally good but most of them were excellent. I felt that with every poem I discovered something new-about the world and myself.

The subject matter varies tremendously as do the forms. There are many prose poems. There is love in its many different shapes. There is grief and loss-there is actually quite a lot about death. Since I was reviewing this book, I felt I had to push through it more quickly than I would have liked to and I look forward to revisiting this volume at greater leisure. It is a book that I am sure will continue to give me great pleasure over time.

My thanks to NetGalley, Scribner Poetry, and the editors and contributors to this fine volume of poetry for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Best American Poetry 2016 edited by David Lehman and Edward Hirsch is the 29th annual edition of American poetry. In 1994, Lehman succeeded Donald Hall as the general editor of the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry series, a position he held for twelve years. In 1997, he teamed with Star Black in creating and directing the famed KGB Bar Monday night poetry series in New York City’s East Village. He has taught in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City since the program’s inception in 1996 and has served as poetry coordinator since 2003. He has edited The Best American Poetry Series since 1988. Hirsch is an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published nine books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, which brings together thirty-five years of work, and Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son that The New Yorker calls “a masterpiece of sorrow.” He has also published five prose books about poetry.

There are two events I look forward to every year -- The Iowa Poetry Prize winners and Lehman's Best American Poetry. As an anthology, it is wide-ranging in subject and style making it a book of discovery and also a book that gives the reader boundaries for his or her taste. This is not a collection where the reader will enjoy every poem, but it is a collection that has something for everyone. In Lehman's introduction, he tells of how poetry is a reflection of the times and the times are not good. There is terrorism, environmental destruction, and a constant stream of doom being reported. There is also a diversity in this collection that reflects a change in America. There are poems from Asian and Indian perspectives adding to the traditional melting pot.

Two poems, in particular, jumped up and rattled my brain. “Humanity 101” by Lynn Emanuel deep in satire and real world reflections of Humanity and Remedial Humanity as college courses. Is that how far we have come as people, needing to learn what it is to be humans? Of course, even in the instruction it is filled with the same warped sense of perceived reality that people believed putting a magnet on their car was supporting the troops, but when physically and mentally broken troops returned home needing help they were quickly forgotten. That poem struck deep. In the same sense "The Lady Responds" by Linda Gergerson on the surface seems to show how lightly we treat animals, especially in emotional and physical cruelty. A little closer look at the dedication "after Sir Thomas Wyatt" and the opening line "Whoso list to hunt..." It is a response to Thomas Wyatt's poem about Anne Boleyn where the deer (Boleyn) he wants cannot be had because it's on Caesar's land (king's wife) so he can no longer hunt. Gergerson's reply is concerning the dogs that hunt, cannot behave, and those that are live bait for bears. Extremely well done on two levels.

Also in this year's edition is a high percentage of prose poetry and free verse, much more than I remember in previous editions. Most are very good but still many may question if it is really poetry or a vivid short story. There is no doubt that prose can be poetic but is it poetry? That is for the reader to decide. There are plenty of more conventional poems in the collection for the traditionalists. Best American Poetry 2016 is a good indicator of the direction of American poetry. It reflects the changes in society both good and bad and how America is seen from the inside. Although Lehman warns of the apocalyptic feelings of the times there is hope and lightness still to be found in American poetry.

I am in the process of making friends with a poet. So I decided to read a book of poetry, and figured a Best Of meant that I wouldn't have to suffer through a bunch of drivel. Of course, now that I've written the first two sentences of this review, I'm thinking I should have planned and made it in iambic pentameter or something, which would mean looking up exactly what iambic pentameter is because I think what I think iambic pentametic is (da da da da da da da; da da da da da da da da) may just be a rhythm that children's books are often written in.

So I don't read much poetry. I know that I like reading poems that rhyme, but then (I thought quite hard on this) I realized that saying I like reading poems that rhyme really means I like reading When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne, because very few poems rhymed in Best American Poetry 2016 and, the ones that did, I didn't enjoy as much as the ones that didn't. I read a few poems from the anthology each day, letting them shine on me like equatorial sunshine. That's what I think good poetry should do, make you feel like one is standing in a southern Italian sun, by the beach but not on the beach, with that white light we don't get here (too far north). Clarity. To be of pure white light is how I described my daughter; good poetry should be like that.

For the most part, Best American Poetry 2016 was like that. I felt cleansed.

Best American Poetry 2016 edited by Edward Hirsch went on sale September 6, 2016.