The Best American Poetry 2006
Guest Editor Billy Collins
Series Editor David Lehman
David Lehman's Introductory Essay.
Billy Collins' Introductory Essay.
Selection criteria.
Poets.
First publication for poems.
Introductory Essays to
The Best American Poetry 2006.
The Best American Poetry 2006
begins with an essay by the series editor, David Lehman,
introducing this year's guest editor,
Billy Collins.
David Lehman:
- Began
The Best American Poetry series in 1988.
The controversial Best of the title
probably helped the series get even more press
than the worthiness of the contents.
- Continues as the series editor.
- Selected Billy Collins as the 2006 guest editor.
- In his 2006 introductory essay:
- Lists Billy Collins' credentials, including his first appearance (1992)
in The Best American Poetry
and his reading of his poem, "The Names"
to a rare joint session of Congress
on the one-year anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attack;
Collins was 2001-2003 Poet Laureate of the U.S.A.
- Addresses the griping when
Collins was appointed Poet Laureate of the U.S.A.:
"Collins was regularly dismissed as an 'easy' or 'anecdotal' poem.
It was then that I knew he had made it big. ... nothing signifies success better than
ritual bad-mouthing by rivals or wannabes."
- Notes some lessons, including: "poetry has the potential to reach masses of people who
read for pleasure, still and always the best reason for reading."
- Comments that Collins "did not alter his style or his seriousness to curry anyone's favor"
and this his style "is amiable, likable, relaxed. ...
insists on the primacy of the ordinary ... contentment in the ordinary ... accessible."
- Acknowledges the on-going debate among poets about accessibility.
- Writes that "at its best, criticism can make better writers of us, link poetry
to its readership, and help build a community."
- Summarizes this issue as "an anthology that demonstrates the vitality of American poetry and
showcases poems of wit, charm, humor, eloquence, ingenuity, and comic invention."
- Concludes with references to two of the hundreds of news articles that have touched on poetry
in the last year. One was the poems to his wife written by actor Jerry Orbach
and read at his funeral. The other was the tragic murder of Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman,
whose husband beat her unconscious.
- Concludes: "Poetry, even the poetry of humor and delight, is an agent of the imagination pressing back,
in Wallace Stevens's phrase, against the pressure of reality."
Billy Collins:
In his insightful and delightful (if a little tetchy at times) introductory essay, Collins:
- Identifies selection criteria for The Best American Poetry 2006.
- Defends the use of the word 'best':
"The designation 'best' doesn't bother me. At worst, the title is a marketing strategy
designed to encourage book sales and maybe convert some new readers to poetry ...
'best' simply meant I could pick what I liked ... I was always convinced
that I could find enough very good poems to make an edition that would demonstrate
the strength and imagination and diversity of the poetry being written in America today."
- Acknowledges: "I am rarely sure of what we are talking about when we talk about poetry"
and argues for a wide definition of the genre.
- Comments on the appearance of inherited forms in this collection, as well as "ad hoc patternings";
and on the value of form in setting up a trust in the reader as well as
the current frequent substitution for form by tone of voice (where "I come to trust or distrust the
authority of the poem after reading just a few lines")
in establishing trust.
See also Billy Collins' poetry and
exercise of how to write a Billy Collins-esque poem.
Selection criteria
by editor Billy Collins for
The Best American Poetry 2006.
Among the criteria for attraction
and thence possible selection in The Best American Poetry 2006 by
Billy Collins:
- "Poems ... [that] caught me in their spell."
- "A human voice speaking to me ... interested in my participation as a reader."
"The recognizable sound of a human voice is always an inducement to continue."
- "Manifest content, a degree of surface clarity."
- "Poems where the poet did not seem completely sure of where he
or she was headed. ... Being oriented at the outset of the poem offers the promise of being
pleasantly disoriented later as the poem moves into more complex territory where the waters
are more strangely stirred."
- Opening lines that start "in the 'factual'"
with a poem that starts in the shallow end of the swimming pool and "gets deeper as it goes along."
- "'The sound of a mind alive in the syntactical process of discovering what it might be thinking'" [quoting
James Longenbach].
- Poems that "combine an acute awareness of tradition with a unique sense of voice."
Among the criteria for exclusion in The Best American Poetry 2006 by
Billy Collins:
- Deal breakers, which he introduced by
citing some of John Ciardi's: "flaws that prevented him from reading
any further. ... the mention of mythological beings and the apostrophe 'Oh!' found places
on his list."
Collins cheerfully declares (implying the fickleness of such lists) that he cannot
read further in a poem with the word cicada.
[Exercise for the reader: which cicada-bearing poem
entered this book?]
- Poems that are largely memories, particularly of family members or of
items associated with a dead person.
[Exercise for the reader: which family-member poem
entered this book?]
- "Poems that presume an interest on my part
in the poet-speaker's psychic condition (usually misery)."
[They all do.]
- "Static poems where the poet is content to decorate a memory,
'poeticize' an experience, or simply indulge in the folly of 'self-expression'."
Poets of
The Best American Poetry 2006.
This collection is edited by Billy Collins. See also:
Of the 75 poets whose work is included, we have web pages on:
Some highlights:
- The most
Billy Collins-esque poem:
"'See the Pyramids Along the Nile'" by Dick Allen.
- The most hilarious poem:
"Monsieur Pierre est mort" by Daniel Gutstein.
- Second funniest poem:
"Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women" by Mark Halliday.
- Most giggly thumbing-its-nose-at-the-rules poem:
"Briefcase of Sorrow" by Richard Newman.
- Most poignant poem:
"What I Never Told You About the Abortion" by Alison Townsend.
- Among the more apt comments from the poets on their poems are
those by Bob Hicok and Kay Ryan, the latter writing:
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"The joke-to-poem ratio here is riskily high.
... When you have a case like this,
it's not a good idea to jostle it with commentary;
the joke can settle out and then you've got a few pallid words with some junk
at the bottom."
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First publication for poems of
The Best American Poetry 2006.
Acknowledges first publications in a smaller variety (12% less) of magazines than did
The Best American Poetry: 2005:
- Alaska Quarterly Review
- American Poetry Review
- Atlantic Review
- The Atlantic Monthly
- Barrow Street
- Boulevard
- The Briar Cliff Review
- The Canary
- Cincinnati Review
- Columbia Poetry Review
- The Connecticut Review
- Crab Orchard Review
- Crazyhorse
- CROWD
- Ecotone
- Endicott Review
- Failbetter
- Field
- Five Points
- Fulcrum
- Georgia Review
- Gettysburg Review
- Gulf Coast
- Harvard Review
- The Hat
- Hayden's Ferry Review
- Iodine Poetry Journal
- The Iowa Review
- The Kenyon Review
- LIT
- Margie
- Michigan Quarterly Review
- MiPoesias
- New American Writing
- The New Criterion
- New England Review
- New Letters
- The New Yorker
- Nightsun
- The Paris Review
- Poetry
- Poetry Daily
- POOL: A Journal of Poetry
- Rhino
- River Styx
- Shenandoah
- Shiny
- Subtropics
- Third Coast
- Verse
- Virginia Quarterly Review
- Yale Review
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Links and Books.
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[Thanks for visiting.]
Books read.
