The Best American Poetry 2007
Guest Editor Heather McHugh
Series Editor David Lehman

* David Lehman's Introductory Essay. * Heather McHugh' Introductory Essay.
* Selection criteria. * Poets. * First publication for poems.

Introductory Essays to
The Best American Poetry 2007.

Buy 'The Best American Poetry 2007'

The Best American Poetry 2007 begins with an essay by the series editor, David Lehman, introducing this year's guest editor, Heather McHugh.

McHugh writes untranslatable poetry full of English-specific word play. As a result, the issue has a lot of unusual poets and poems for BAP. It turns out to be one of my favorite issues!

David Lehman:

Heather McHugh:

Her first BAP appearance was "And What Do You Get" in the 1995 issue. In her introductory essay for the 2007 volume wastes no time on claiming that she has actually picked the "best" poems. Highlights include:

Selection criteria by editor Heather McHugh for
The Best American Poetry 2007.

Among the criteria for attraction (or not!) and thence possible selection in The Best American Poetry 2007 by Heather McHugh:

Notice the birth years of the poets: McHugh has vaulted forward: the mode (most common decade) was the 1940s in the 2006 issue; it's the 1970s in the 2007 issue:

Decade of birth. 2007 issue. 2006 issue. 1995 issue (year of
Heather McHugh's appearance).
0 0 0
0 0 0
1 0 0
10+6=16 10+1=11 0
10+3=13 10+2=12 7
10+5=15 10+4=14 10+10+10=30
10+5=15 10+10+3=23 10+10=20
6 10 5
6 3 10+2=12
1 0 0
0 0 0

Poets of
The Best American Poetry 2007.

Of the 72 poets whose work is included (three poets get two poems each), we have web pages on:

Best of the best include:

Nicky Beer's Q-and-A sequence
Denise Duhamel's hilarious "Language Police Report"
Louise Gluck's "Archaic Fragment"
Brad Leithauser's "A Good List"
Marilyn Nelson's "Etymology"
Marya Rosenberg's haiku-senryu-spamku:
    "If I Tell You You're Beautiful
     Will You Report Me?":
     A West Point Haiku Series
Alan Shapiro's "Country Western Singer"
David Shumate's "Drawing Jesus"
Cody Walker's "Coulrophobia"
Charles Harper Webb's "Big"

Rosenberg's poem is in her first and only publication, in "Hanging Loose." At first publication, she was 26 years old.

First publication for poems of
The Best American Poetry 2007.

Acknowledges first publications in only 45 publications. This is a smaller variety (14% less) than the 52 in The Best American Poetry: 2006: and a still smaller variety (25% less) than the 60 in The Best American Poetry: 2005:

  1. Alaska Quarterly Review
  2. American Poet
  3. American Poetry Review
  4. The Antioch Review
  5. Atlanta Review
  6. Barrow Street
  7. Beloit Poetry Journal
  8. BOMB
  9. Bookforum
  10. Colorado Review
  11. Conduit
  12. The Cortland Review
  13. Crazyhorse
  14. Denver Quarterly
  15. Fence
  16. FIELD
  17. Five Points
  18. Gulf Coast
  19. Hanging Loose
  20. Iowa Review
  21. The Kenyon Review
  22. Literary Imagination
  23. Michigan Quarterly Review
  24. New American Writing
  25. The New Criterion
  26. New England Review
  27. New Letters
  28. The New Yorker
  29. Ploughshares
  30. Poet Lore
  31. Poetry
  32. POOL: A Journal of Poetry
  33. Raritan
  34. Rattle
  35. Sacramento News and Review
  36. Sentence
  37. Southwest Review
  38. Subtropics
  39. Taupaulin Sky
  40. the tiny
  41. TriQuarterly
  42. Verse
  43. Verse Daily
  44. Virginia Quarterly Review
  45. The Vocabula Review

Links and Books.

Links and Books.


[Thanks for visiting.]