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The 2021 edition of the leading collection of contemporary American poetry is guest edited by the former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, providing renewed proof that this is “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).
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.
Summary
The 2021 edition of the leading collection of contemporary American poetry is guest edited by the former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, providing renewed proof that this is “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).
Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a choice of the year’s most memorable poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work. The guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2021 is Tracy K. Smith, the former United States Poet Laureate, whose own poems are, Toi Derricotte’s words, “beautiful and serene” in their surfaces with an underlying “sense of an unknown vastness.” In The Best American Poetry 2021, Smith has selected a distinguished array of works both vast and beautiful by such important voices as Henri Cole, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Nobel laureate Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.
Additional text
“This annual anthology touches on Covid, George Floyd and much else that’s timely and timeless, with work from Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limón and others.”--The New York Times
