The Best American Poetry 2006: Series Editor David Lehman - Hardcover

Collins, Billy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743229673 ISBN 13: 9780743229678

Publisher: Scribner, 2006

Synopsis

A vivid anthology of poems filled with wit, humor, imagination, and surprise, selected by guest editor Billy Collins.

The seventy-five poems in an array of styles and forms in this collection celebrate the pleasures of poetry, from writers as varied as Laura Cronk to Reb Livingston. With insightful comments from the poets illuminating their work, and series editor David Lehman’s thought-provoking foreword, The Best American Poetry 2006 is a brilliant addition to a series that links the most noteworthy verse and prose poems of our time to a readership as discerning as it is devoted to the art of poetry.

About this title

About the Author

David Lehman, the series editor of The Best American Poetry, edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His books of poetry include The Morning Line, When a Woman Loves a Man, and The Daily Mirror. He has written such nonfiction books as Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Billy Collins is the award-winning author of The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, and Picnic, Lightning, among other poetry collections. He has edited the anthologies Poetry 180 and 180 More. He is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past thirty years. From 2001 to 2003 he served as the Poet Laureate of the United States.

Reviews

Starred Review. In the 19th installment of this annual series, former poet laureate Collins (The Trouble with Poetry, 2005), one of America's most popular poets ever, has culled the typical handful of big names and some surprising new voices from more than 50 American literary publications. Collins's predilections for accessibility, humor and tidy forms are evident, but there are also surprises. Usual suspects—former Best American editors Ashbery (who surprises with a poem in neatly rhymed couplets), Hass, Simic, Tate and Muldoon, as well as Mary Oliver—meet rising masters like Kay Ryan ("A bird's/ worth of weight/ or one bird-weight/ of Wordsworth"), Vijay Seshadri and Franz Wright. Most interesting, however, is the chance each volume offers to see which up-and-comers make the cut. This year's roster includes edgy poems by Joy Katz, Danielle Pafunda ("my hair cramped with sexy"), Terrance Hayes, and Christian Hawkey ("O my/ beloved shovel-nosed mole"), among others. Collins's surprising and opinionated introduction—in which he admits that, unlike some of series editor David Lehman's previous guest editors, "the designation 'best' doesn't bother me," and offers his definition of a good poem (often one that "starts in the factual" and displays "a tone of playful irreverence")—may cause some controversy. (Sept.)
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Going strong since 1988, each volume in this excellent series is distinct. This year Collins, America's funniest, slyest, and most diabolically charismatic poet, takes the helm, prompting series editor Lehman to write an unusually frank foreword in which he measures the gap between Collins' great popularity with readers and the venomous criticism of his peers. Collins follows with an introduction in which he asserts that the most "alive and immediate poems . . . combine an acute awareness of tradition with a unique freshness of voice." Given the high-wire acrobatics of his own work, it's no surprise that Collins selected 75 vital and imaginative poems, many evincing "playful irreverence." There's Denise Duhamel's "Please Don't Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen"; Amy Gerstler's hilarious missive to a rebellious six-year-old on being boiled alive; Rachel Hadas citing Seuss, not Zeus; Bob Hicok at the movies; Kay Ryan on thin ice; and Mary Jo Salter asking, "Who says science fiction / is only set in the future?" Poetry writ large. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743229673
• ISBN 13: 9780743229678
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Lehman David