The Best American Poetry 1996

The ninth anthology in an award-winning series, a diverse collection of the seventy-five best poems of 1995, culled from more than forty literary journals, includes the work of African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, gays, and women. 40,000 first printing.

As those familiar with Rich's politics and persuasions would expect, her personal selection of outstanding poems published in 1995 offers the widest multicultural gathering of voices?from Wanda Coleman to Martin Espada to Stanley Kunitz?yet represented in this annual series. It's an anthology of aching, straightforward narratives that explore the effects of victimization and injustice on the American psyche. Since much of this work springs from the need to witness and attest, experimental poetics take a back seat to direct, dignified expression, and the tone is more often one of anger and resignation ("We have done away with all noise, but the agony of respiration"?David Shapiro) than of reverie. Rich does not exclude the famous (Atwood, Merrill, Merwin) in her quest for diversity, but as this series proves time and again, some of the most interesting poetry comes from the yet-to-be-known. Poets to watch for in the years to come: Wang Ping, C.S. Giscombe, and Beth Ann Fennelly. For all collections.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Last year, selecting editor Richard Howard shook up this fixture of the American poetry scene by excluding poets represented in three or more previous editions. This year, Adrienne Rich presents even more first-timers (only 19 contributors are repeaters; Howard had 27). This is the result of not just her own questing taste but also of her decision not to worry about what was "best" but to select poems she "found especially urgent, lively, resistant, resonant, demanding to be reread." Readers of her own writing will not be surprised that, following those criteria, she has selected maybe more women and certainly more minority poets than have appeared in any previous edition. Reflecting her famous engagement with progressive causes, Rich's selection bristles with protest, passion, formal experiment, justice hunger, and vocal variety (several poems are in Spanish, partly and even wholly). Some may take issue with the politics of one or another of these poets, but they will not be bored by these poems. Ray Olson