''The Best American Poetry 2001'', a volume in ''

The Best American Poetry series ''The Best American Poetry'' series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems. Background The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the general ...

'', was edited by

David Lehman David Lehman (born June 11, 1948David Lehman
at poets.org) is an American poet, non-fiction writer, and li ...

and by guest editor

Robert Hass Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection ''Time and Materials: Poems 1997 ...

Background

In his introduction, Hass wrote, "There are roughly three traditions in American poetry at this point: a metrical tradition that can be very nervy and that is also basically classical in impulse; a strong central tradition of free verse made out of both romanticism and modernism, split between the impulses of an inward and psychological writing and an outward and realist one, at its best fusing the two; and an experimental tradition that is usually more passionate about form than content, perception than emotion, restless with the conventions of the art, skeptical about the political underpinnings of current practice, and intent on inventing a new one, or at least undermining what seems repressive in the current formed style. ..At the moment there are poets doing good, bad, and indifferent work in all these ranges." Speaking of the selection process for his editorship, Hass observed that he received "boxes... fxeroxes and notations of the indefatigable

David Lehman David Lehman (born June 11, 1948David Lehman
at poets.org) is an American poet, non-fiction writer, and li ...

....I had marked for rereading a couple of hundred poems yselfand I had David's sometimes overlapping lists...

Maureen McLane, in a book review in ''

The Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'', said of Hass' description that "it's hard to imagine a more judicious account of major tendencies."
Hass quoted from his Introduction to ''The Best American Poetry 2001'', by Maureen McLane in "Eclectic collection: A new anthology of American works includes a wide range of forms, styles and themes", a review of the book on page 4 of the Books section of ''

'', September 23, 2001, accessed via Newsbank.com Web site, October 13, 2007 "While many charming, witty poems have made it into this anthology, there are plenty of others that would seem to evade not only the perils of being charming but indeed the strictures of being a poem, conventionally understood," McLane wrote. She found the selections by

Joshua Clover Joshua Clover (born December 30, 1962 in Berkeley, California) is a writer and a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Davis. He is a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been t ...

Thomas Sayers Ellis Thomas Sayers Ellis (born Washington, D.C.) is an American poet, photographer and band leader. He previously taught as an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Bennington College in Vermont, and also at Sarah Lawrenc ...

, Cal Bedient,

Robert Bly Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ' ...

Michael Burkard Michael Paul Burkard is an American poet. Life He graduated from Hobart College in 1968 and from the Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA in 1973. He taught at Kirkland College (1975–78) and Sarah Lawrence College (1983–84, 1986–87), and ha ...

and

Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine (; born September 4, 1963) is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Her book of poetry, '' Citizen: An American L ...

confusing (but not necessarily bad poems for that reason), and praised the work by

Brenda Hillman Brenda Hillman (born March 27, 1951 in Tucson, Arizona) is an American poet and translator. She is the author of ten collections of poetry: ''White Dress'', ''Fortress'', ''Death Tractates'', ''Bright Existence'', ''Loose Sugar'', ''Cascadia'', '' ...

Louise Glück Louise Elisabeth Glück ( ; born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". He ...

Alan Feldman Alan may refer to: People *Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname *Alan (given name), an English given name **List of people with given name Alan ''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.'' * A ...

Bernard Welt Bernard (''Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). ...

Fanny Howe Fanny Howe (born October 15, 1940 in Buffalo, New York) is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Howe has written more than 20 books of poetry and prose. Her major works include poetry such as ''One Crossed Out'', ''Gone'', and ''S ...

, Michael Palmer,

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of ...

Rachel Rose Rachel Rose (born September 20, 1970) is a Canadian/American poet, essayist and short story writer. She has published three collections of poetry, ''Giving My Body to Science'', ''Notes on Arrival and Departure'', and ''Song and Spectacle''. Her ...

, David Kirby,

Jewelle Gomez Jewelle Gomez (born September 11, 1948) is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing� ...

, Noelle Kocot and

Grace Paley Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist. Paley wrote three critically acclaimed collections of short stories, which were compiled in the Pulitzer Prize and Na ...

. Hass also included newly published work by the late

Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...

and

James Schuyler James Marcus Schuyler (November 9, 1923 – April 12, 1991) was an American poet. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection ''The Morning of the Poem''. He was a central figure in the New York School and is of ...

. Schuyler's poem was discovered by David Lehman in May 1994 in John Ashbery's archive at Harvard's Houghton Library and appeared six years later in "The New Yorker". One of the poems Hass chose for the volume was by his wife,
Web page titled "Robert Hass" at the Poets.org Web site of the Academy of American Poets ("He lives in California with his wife, poet Brenda Hillman ..."), accessed October 10, 2007

Poets and poems included

Notes

External links

Web page for contents of the book
with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared

"The Best I Can Do This Year: Lehman's "Best American Poetry 2001" by Joan Houlihan {{DEFAULTSORT:Best American Poetry 2001, The Best American Poetry 2001, The Best American Poetry 2001, The

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

American poetry anthologies

Background

Poets and poems included

See also

Notes

External links