The Best American Poetry 2015 (The Best American Poetry series) - Softcover

Lehman, David; Alexie, Sherman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476708207 ISBN 13: 9781476708201

Publisher: Scribner, 2015

Synopsis

The premier anthology of contemporary American poetry continues with an exceptional volume edited by award-winning novelist and poet Sherman Alexie, now with a new essay by Alexie on reactions to the 2015 publication.

Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry has become a mainstay for the direction and spirit of American poetry. Each volume in the series presents the year’s most extraordinary new poems and writers. Guest editor Sherman Alexie’s picks for The Best American Poetry 2015 highlight the depth and breadth of the American experience. Culled from electronic and print journals, the poems showcase some of our leading luminaries—Amy Gerstler, Terrance Hayes, Ron Padgett, Jane Hirshfield—and introduce a number of outstanding younger poets taking their place in the limelight.

A leading figure since his breakout poetry collection The Business of Fancydancing in 1992, Sherman Alexie won the National Book Award for his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. He describes himself as “lucky enough to be a full-time writer” and has written short stories, novels, screenplays, and essays—but he is at his core a poet. As always, series editor David Lehman’s foreword assessing the state of the art kicks off the book, followed by an introductory essay in which Alexie discusses his selections. The Best American Poetry 2015 is a guide to who’s who and what’s happening in American poetry today.

About this title

About the Author:

David Lehman, the series editor of The Best American Poetry, is also the editor of the Oxford Book of American Poetry. His books of poetry include Poems in the Manner Of, New and Selected Poems, Yeshiva Boys, When a Woman Loves a Man, and The Daily Mirror. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Sherman Alexie, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and performer. His twenty-four books include What I've Stolen, What I've Earned, poetry, Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel. Alexie has been an urban Indian since 1994 and lives in Seattle with his family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Best American Poetry 2015 SARAH ARVIO

Bodhisattva

The new news is I love you my nudist

the new news is I love you my buddhist

my naked body and budding pleasure

in the weather of your presence

Not whether your presence but how

Oh love a new nodule of neurosis

a posy of new roses proposing

a new era for us nobis pacem

Oh my bodhisattva of new roses

you’ve saved me from my no-love neurosis

You’ve saved my old body from the fatwa

Let’s lie down in a bed of roses

a pocketful that rings round the rosy

If this is the end of the world my love

let’s fall down in bed and die

Let’s give a new nod to nothing

Let’s give a rosebud to nothing at all

How I love the new roses of nothing

Oh my bodhisattva of nothing

boding I hope no news but this

For our bodies and souls I hope nothing

but the weather of us in our peace

from Poem-a-Day

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1476708207
• ISBN 13: 9781476708201
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240