The Best American Poetry 2002 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743203852 ISBN 13: 9780743203852

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

Synopsis

A latest installment of the popular annual series includes works by such writers as Adrienne Rich, Anne Carson, and Anselm Berrigan, and features additional commentary on many of the pieces as well as a modern assessment of poetry today.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts in 1926. In the 1950s he taught at Black Mountain College and edited The Black Mountain Review. Since 1966 he has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Creeley was New York State Poet from 1989 to 1991, and his many volumes of poetry include For Love, Pieces, and Memory Gardens. He lives in Buffalo, New York, and in Waldoboro, Maine.

From Publishers Weekly:

This installment of the venerable series is refreshing for what it isn't: a compendium of September 11 poems. In fact, Creeley, selected by series editor David Lehman to sit in the revolving editor's chair, makes no mention of 9/11 in his six-page introduction, while Lehman's own seven-page performance is split between a paean to poet laureate Billy Collins and a discussion of September 11's poetic effects, with one paragraph devoted to the choice of Creeley. Yet Creeley's own choice of poems is balanced and satisfying, providing space for contemplation, while opening a rare window on dissent. Along with fine poems from John Ashbery, Frank Bidart, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, Sharon Olds, Carl Phillips and Charles Wright, we get Amiri Baraka's "The Golgotha Local" ("But if you understood, the entire question, the pause, the certain ugliness/ Of what you see, if between they legs you got to look, if you is ruled by thief and/ crook. If you is more than what you be..."), a powerful Alice Notley elegy, Benjamin Friedlander's "Independence Day" ("Let freedom bling/ Bling, Shaq. Like/ A dripping popsicle torn in half"), Steve Malmude's "Perfect Front Door" and Mong-Lan's epic "Trail": "what is the remedy for momentum for mania for a deciduous heart?" These and many other poems here will challenge readers to find their own remedies.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743203852
• ISBN 13: 9780743203852
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Creeley Robert, Lehman David