| |
Now in its fifth year, The Best American Poetry has become "one of autumn's events" (Commonweal). Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic, guest editor of the 1992 edition, has chosen seventy-five poems from more than three dozen magazines, illustrating the dazzling variety of American poetic practice today. The poems — formal and free verse, lyric and narrative, meditative, comic, elegiac — testify to Mr. Simic's belief that "there's nothing more American and more hopeful than our poetry." In addition to Mr. Simic's introduction and a foreword by series editor David Lehman, this anthology includes notes and comments by his contributors, a unique feature praised by reviewers. According to Joseph Parisi in the Chicago Tribune, The Best American Poetry attests to "the renewed vitality of tradition, as well as the versatility of a younger generation" among contemporary American poets. Peter Meinke in The Washington Post Book World asserts that "it's impossible to read [these poems] without thinking that the art is healthy and vigorous. The series is the best hope we have for extending the audience" of American poetry. |
|
