This is really a fun book. The structure of it is original and ingenious; 85 poets print one of their poems, and then write a short essay about the process of writing the poem. More than any book I've ever read about "the poet's journey" or "the process of writing poetry" or anything else, this offers insight into the process of writing and the evolution of a work. And it offers 85 different perspectives. I love this book.

I could relate to about 1/10th of the poems. My instinct (late from the moldering glades of the academy) is that these poems were chosen to broaden (not deepen) the moat around the ivory tower -- poetry IS dead in this volume, mostly.

Here in Australia, where I've been living for twenty years as a teacher, I'd lost contact with American poetry. I happened on the Poetry Daily web site and dived in. And found, I could order books through Amazon which I'd never seen. I now have two shelves of much read poetry and more in containers on slow ships on their way. I remember the pleasure I got from reading the commentaries and the poems in the Best...of 1997. So when I saw the Best of the Best (Harold Bloom's ed) I picked it up here, even though it was very expensive. While I enjoyed most of the poems, I found his introduction surprising. What a grump!

I'm pro-Bloom in the general political/aesthetic sense, and it was satisfying for me to see him crystalize some of my sentiments in his foreword. But I bought the book for the poetry, and (judging from the other Best... books I own) I'm of the opinion that Bloom did a mediocre job as editor. His options were, thankfully, limited to a set comprised mostly of strong poems. This book could probably have survived the abuses of a monkey-throwing-darts-at-a-list-of-options editor.

I'll admit a bias: I was hoping to see a few of my favorite poets in this year's edition of the Best American Poetry, but was sadly disappointed. No Charles Simic, no Charles Wright, no John Ashbery. But what did make it in this year are certainly great:Mary Oliver's "Work," a long poem contemplating nature (her perennial interest), Susan Wood's "Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair," (the best of many elegies to the late Larry Levis) and Donald Justice's "Ralph: A Love Story." Dove has done an excellent job of including long and short poems alike, and has been fairly representative of the best poets writing and publishing today. Some editors seem to be political in their selections: Adrienne Rich chose none of the "big" names and John Hollander admittedly picked those that were long and/or formal. Another interesting feature of this year's edition is the lists of Best Poems of the Century. Past editors were asked to each give a list of what they felt were the fifteen best American poems of the last 100 years. The results were interesting, with a few editors declining to participate. My choice as best poem from that list: "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by John Ashbery.

First, to answer the reviewer below as to why no Ashbery, no Ruth Stone: Ashbery has been braindead for years and Ruth Stone is minor, minor, minor, in ambition and in achievement. Not to say that others here won't prove to be minor too, but Dove's anthology is the most stylistically diverse yet(Howard's came close) and its real strength is that instead of including the usual stuff from the usual suspects, she made the effort to find young/emerging poets whose work, taken poem by individual poem, is as interesting if not more so. For example, Olena Kalytiak Davis' poem and Linh Dinh's poem are terrific. No disrespect to the man who revolutionized American poetry--respect, indeed, to the body of his work--but why include rehashed and weaker versions of what he used to write when you can include fresh voices full of energy, pointing forward? Sure, there are plenty of lame poems here, but fewer than usual, and Dove's anthology also feels hugely honest and energetic: she didn't settle for the same old same old but also didn't grind a silly axe. She found what she liked and what she likes is wonderfully wide-ranging. Thanks, Rita!

The challenge of having a different distinguished editor each year is that the choices reflect an aesthetic and political bias. I welcomed this year's selections because Rita Dove made no apologies for her diverse list. Readers will like some and dislike some, but that's true for any anthology. I'm dismayed that people expect the same cluster of poets year-to-year; that would only happen if the editor didn't change. And that nonprogessive expectation also reflects the presumption that the same poets write memorable poems every single year of their careers--not so. Frankly, as Charles Simic proclaims, prolific poets are capable of bad poetry. I think Dove's has been the best collection so far because it gives us a taste of the big flavor that is contemporary American poetry. And let me be the first to congratulate her for not including many representatives of that stale vanguard, e.g. Ashbery.

The most fascinating part of the De Man saga is the fact that he lived a lie for roughly forty years, like some sort of film noir of a lie lived in plain sight. Everything he wrote after the war can only be seen in the light of the fact, not only that he was a collaborator, but that he must have known that his past would eventually turn up, and that everything he wrote about guilt and truth and language would eventually be read in that light. His nihilism was in a sense one long exculpation. And why was he never fingered during his life? Was there no other Belgian refugee who said, "Wait a minute, I remember this guy from Le soir vole!" How could a highly visible collaborator survive a very public career in the US without even changing his name? The only way to explain it is by saying that he was Belgian and wrote in Flemish, but even that doesn't explain it. And if he was such a cad, how come none of his Belgian friends--or even his wife, who he deserted--ratted him out? Strangely, Lehman never even mentions that, as if the question never occurs to him. De Man's writing is magisterial and affectless, and it is not hard to understand why his students admired him so greatly. His story reminds me a great deal of that of Leo Strauss, another refugee who came to the US (under very different circumstances) and also founded a sect on the basis of a method of reading, deconstruction in the one case and esotericism in the other.

Why is this book out of print? It should be taught in universities as a classic work on 20th century literary criticism and "theory". Its take on the posthumous Paul De Man scandal is clear, comprehensive, and mostly convincing. De Man, a dead deconstrutionist, was revealed to have been a cad in his public and private lives. Lehman demonstrates how the equivoque and equivoation that are central to deconstrutionism allowed De Man to rationalize his past as a Nazi collaborator, as a liar to USA immigration and to influential American intellectuals in the 1950s, and as a shuffler off of responsibilities to his first wife and family, all as mere textual details that didn't need addressing in his later career as a very respected American literary critic and academic. I disliked De Man's mandarin literary criticism even before I knew he was involved in deconstructionism--I thought his insistence on universal textual equivocation, universal lack of definitive textual commitment, and universal textual self-referentiality was part of the conservative, literature-has-no-social-bearing school of literary criticism which dominated the academy in the 1950s, and remained vital though not unchallenged there in the 1960s and early 70s. I dock Lehman's book one star for his too indiscriminately lumping De Man and deconstrutionism with other, more socially involved movements in academic thought that Lehmann also happens to dislike.

Bloom's scathing, right-on-the-mark intro to 1997's Best of the Best seems to have breathed new life into this series. John Hollander has followed in the footsteps of Bloom by choosing poems that represent a wide range of styles, talents, and persuasions, but share one thing- poetic excellence. Though I'd like to see more selections from smaller presses, I'm delighted to have a book of 1998 poetry that doesn't advance a political agenda or look beyond the poems themselves to find meaning and value. Craig Arnold's "Hot" is worth the cover pirce alone- a poem that resonates, haunts, and changes on every re-reading. Selections by Ammons, Bly, Ashbery, and Strand show these masters at their finest. Bloom revitalized this once-sleepy series last year, and Hollander follows with a selection of poems that is even better than the Best of the Best. If you fear that we have lost our poetic magic in the late 20th century, this book will give you cause to reconsider.

This is simply the most superb installment in the series of Best American poetry anthologies. Robert Bly has chosen rich poems that are free of airs and stuffy language, cultivating the unmistakable flavor of American poetry. From newer names like the delightful Billy Collins to older legends such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Phil Levine and Robert Creely, The Best American Poetry of 1999 will have every reader finding something to love within its pages. All poetry lovers-particularly those who are tired of the so-called "language poets"-must give this book a try.

As both a poet and a literature teacher who specializes in modern American verse, I have endured the stereotypical attacks upon modern verse many times. Why is it so hard to read? Why are poets so introspective? Why does poetry even exist at all? Robert Bly's selections for the Best American of 2000 answers all of these attacks with grace and gusto. These poems made me ask not "Why does poetry exist?" but rather, "Why doesn't more poetry exist?" This collection has great new offerings from Philip Levine, Louis Gluck, Denise Levertov, and other modern American masters. These poems aren't hard to read, and they aren't obscure. Modern American verse asks that its reader thinks for himself. If the reader isn't willing to participate actively in these poems, he will likely fail to enjoy them.

I always look forward to the best in American poetry every year, and 1999's anthology is a great addition to this series.

This series is becoming more and more boring with time. The main reason is that it is more and more "intelectual" and smells university. Many poems are well written by today's standards, but that may just be the best way to write a bad poem. A bad poem can be considered good literature, but many good ones were considered in their time bad literature. I didn't buy this book, I read a lot of pages in the store and didn't even find three poems to make me part from my 15 bucks. The other volumes I have just sit in my library and just one or two poems in the 4 volumes I have really hit the score and make want to come back again. Want a good american anthology? Then go fot Alan kaufman's "The Outlaw bible of American poetry". Another good one is the "vintage book of American poetry". I hope someone tries to compete with this series because there is a lot of great stuff going on, the editors here seem to be fishing in the wrong waters.

In a time of struggle we turn to poems, at least I do, and there are poems here that make me feel that poetry has so many disguises, so many different "looks," that it mirrors the vast diversity of this great land in that noble respect. No one can like them all equally but we can be glad they exist. I love the comic poems, poems of charm and wit, and am less crazy about the dry academic "languagey" poems, but that's just me. The essay by Robert Hass is superb and the foreword by the series editor has so much energy and information it's a delight. Maybe no poem in the book is as great as Auden's "September 1, 1939," but if you read Ashbury, or Donald Hall, or Adrienne Rich, or Robert Creeley, or Olena Kalytiak Davis, you'll feel in your heart of hearts that indeed "we must love one another and die," and for as noble a cause as freedom, if not joy, poetry and life itself. Heartily recommended.

BAP 2001 continues the tradition established by previous volumes by presenting great poetry from well-known, lesser-known, and unknown American poets.

True, no annual volume of poetry can collect all of the "best" poems published that year, but the BEST AMERICAN POETRY series comes awfully close. This collection is just as diverse as past collections: John Ashbery shuffles alongside Thomas Sayers Ellis, Billy Collins plays in the snow, Anne Carson longs, watching Christopher Edgar drifting in the clouds. Donald Hall's poem "Her Garden" is heartbreaking and nearly perfect. Yusef Komunyakaa, Haryette Mullen, and Robert Bly also show up and there's a beautiful banter abounding.

David Lehman has written another funny and insightful foreword and Robert Hass fulfills the guest editor's job of distancing himself as much as possible from the claim of the series' title.

This is a fantastic collection, an indespensible series, and one that should be read if you want to discover the current, vibrant, thriving state of American poetry.

This book can be the most commercially successful book of poetry to be ever published if it were used as a cure for insomniacs. Mr. Lehman writes interminably boring lines which ultimately put this reader (and many others) to sleep. -Lucy Greely

This is a dynamite book of poems. My candidate for the most underrated volume of its decade! Favorite poems: "Perfidia," the hilarious anti-tenure tirade "With Tenure," the equally hilarious parody of academic lit crit ("One Size Fits All"), the amazing sequence of "Mythologies," the narrative poems set in the 1970s, etc etc etc. This book rewards multiple readings.

I expected quite a bit from this book. Not only is it's title *Best* American Poetry, but the a quick glance at the contents shows these names: A.R. Ammons, Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Bly, Creeley, Rita Dove, Thom Gunn, Donald Hall, Paul Hoover, Andrew Hudgins, Donald Justice, Koch, McDowell, Merrill, Pinsky, Charles Simic, Louis Simpson, Snodgrass, Gary Snyder and Richard Wilbur. It's an impressive line up of names. But this collection was a let down. Sure, there were some really good poems (such as the one by Elizabeth Bishop), and there were a lot of ok poems or other poems worth noting, but it isn't worthy of being called the best of any given year.

Adrienne Rich did a much better job of editing this series. Unfortunately, it seems that David Lehman's flip style of nonsense poetry of unimportance and clever witty self-involved and boring poetry has permeated the collections for 2001 and 2002. Both last year's, supposedly edited by Robert Hass, hard to believe, and this 2002 volume, supposedly edited by Robert Creeley, also hard to believe, are full of David Lehman's silliness, his air-headed cleverness. Lehman is no judge of great poetry, and very much wedded to the light-weight qualities of the New York School of poetry, i.e. those who think, for one example, that Anne Waldman can write when words are definitely not her medium! There is not enough good, solid poetry in either of these volumes, and too many supposedely experimental, witticism that float off to nowhere. Time will show that David Lehman's taste had a terrible influence, along with Bush's light-weight Billy Collin's, on the current years of American Poetry--not at all in the tradition of our greats, i.e. Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Galway Kinnell, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Denise Levertov, etc., but in the tradition of his clique and "in" crowd who will be on the outs of the final reckoning. Under his editorship, the series has become NOT the Best American Poetry despite a few good poems here and there and too much airy, worthless wit.

I've read this series since 1989 or so and have thought it consistently excellent. This volume, however, is almost entirely made of exceptionally eccentric poetry that will alienate almost all readers. As I read it, I kept thinking about this: Somewhere a thoughtful, educated and well-read person decides he or she will finally take time to explore what is going on in today's poetry. Our hypothetical friend goes to his or her local bookseller and finds "The Best American Poetry 2002" and understandably concludes this is an ideal book with which to start. It would likely be his or her last purchase of contemporary poetry. It's very much unbalanced and is simply not at all representative of poetry in 2002. The editor indulges his own taste for the inaccessible and quirky with no consideration for the task of presenting, well, "The Best American Poetry."

The Best American Poetry series can never live up to its title (just about every editor has said in their introduction, "These may not really be your idea of 'the best' -- they're just the poems I most liked this year"), but by having different editors each year, the books offer an interesting view of what eminent poets consider work of note.

For me, the books work best when the editor is someone with a specific and, most likely, controversial vision -- a person who isn't afraid of manifestos and subjectivity. Thus, up until now, my favorite volume in the series was the 1996 edition edited by Adrienne Rich -- not because I think all of the poems she chose were brilliant (many weren't), but rather because the choices were unpredictable and, though diverse, held together by a clear philosophical intent on the editor's part. (It was exactly this philosophical intent which made the book the most controversial one in the series, with Harold Bloom deliberately excluding any of Rich's choices from the ten-year retrospective volume.)

Robert Creeley's volume seems even better to me than Rich's (partly because I like Creeley's view of poetry more than Rich's). I expect, though, that the book will either be loved or hated by readers, for though there are some old favorites such as Donald Hall and Sharon Olds included, the majority of the poems are innovative and "difficult".

Approached with an open mind, a high tolerance for ambiguity and confusion, and a certain sense of humor, though, and this book reveals itself to be full of wonders. I couldn't tell you what the exact meaning of Forrest Gander's magnificent "Carried Across" is, but I can say that reading it was one of the most powerful and rewarding experiences I've had while reading contemporary poetry. None of the other poems had quite the same effect on me, but why should they? Jenny Boully's footnotes-to-blank-space "The Body" had me laughing and thinking and wondering and rethinking as I wandered through it, a bit lost but also amused, and many other poems had similar effects.

Frank O'Hara maintained that poetry should at least be as interesting as movies, and, with the proper willingness on the reader's part to stay open to oddity, just about all of these poems meet that test.