The Best American Poetry 2000

Book Overview

A mid an "explosion in the interest of poetry nationwide" (The New York Times), The Best American Poetry 2000 delivers one of the finest volumes yet in this renowned series. Guest editor Rita Dove, a distinguished figure in the poetry world and the second African-American poet ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, brings all of her dynamism and well-honed acumen to bear on this project. Dove used a simple yet exacting method to make her selections:...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743200330
• ISBN13: 9780743200332
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

An Exceptional Read

David Lehman is one of the most facinating writers, poets, and editors that I have ever read. He is the author of The Daily Mirror, a wonderful and well penned selection of poems. I believe his perspective and talent for finding the best poets lies in his experience. Mr.Lehman is a great editor and any reader who chooses to pick up and read this book will be thankful. One can learn so much from the writers and makers of The Best American Poetry books. I also recommend, his most recent book, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets. I give all these books 5 stars!

Among the Best Bets

Picking the best involves making bets, and one reason I like this series is the willingness of the editors to make big wagers. This year's volume gives me plenty to like -- including poets I'd not previously encountered (like Linh Dinh, Christopher Edgar, Olena Kalytiak Davis) as well as familiar names (Ammons, Merwin, Wilbur). Any book that can span the gamut from radically chic Michael Palmer on one end to prim Mary Jo Salter on the other is a perfect paradigm of psotmodern values. (Did I really write that?)The concluding section in the book, where the editors of the series going back to John Ashbery pick their favorite poems of the 20th century, is not only fun, it performs an important service in directing attention to great poems easily overlooked. As always I look forward with huge interest to next year's volume. This anthology quickens the appetite for more, always more.

The Best BAP so far

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!

An Excellent Selection

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.

Memorable, but challenging poetry.

For the past ten years or so, I've been lured to this annual anthology with its title promising "the best" poetry of a given year, and every year I encounter a few poets whose poems here prompt me to read their work beyond this best-of series. (Last year, for instance, I discovered the poetry of Billy Collins, which I recommend.) However, although the poetry in this series is worthwhile, I often wonder if it is really "the best" poetry published during that year.The seventy-five poems editor and Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Rita Dove, includes in this year's collection are mostly memorable and often challenging, but probably not truly great. At least for me, some of the poems are difficult, if not impenetrable. However, for anyone who enjoys reading poetry, this book is worthwhile. This year, I especially liked Julianna Baggott's "Mary Todd on Her Deathbed" (p. 32); W. S. Merwin's "The Hours of Darkness" (p. 116), in which he writes, "how small the day is/ the time of colors/ the rush of brightness" (p. 118); Mary Oliver's "Work" (p. 123), in which she writes, "when the sparrow sings, its whole body trembles" (p. 124), "words are the thunders of the mind" (p. 125), and "it may be the rock in the field is also a song" (p. 127); and Dean Young's "The Infirmament" (p. 205).Also, for those who like such lists, this year's anthology concludes with John Ashberry's, Donald Hall's, Jorie Graham's, Mark Strand's, Charles Simic's, Robert Bly's, and Rita Dove's favorite poems of the last century (pp. 269-285), together with Louise Gluck's explanation why it would be an impossible task for her to create such a list. "There can't be," she writes, "the best of the great" (p. 276).G. Merritt