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.
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:
- 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 Heather McHugh as the 2007 guest editor.
- In his 2007 introductory essay, Lehman:
- Defends the legacy of parody in poetry -- in anticipation
of the many parodies in this volume.
- Lists Heather McHugh' credentials,
including her "cutting elegance against glib and simplistic poems by well-meaning citizens.
...
Against that tedium,
a little unholiness comes as a big relief."
- Proclaims:
"I favor both kinds of poems -- the kind that celebrates and
the kind that
criticizes."
- Proclaims: "I believe, with Wordsworth, that the poet's first obligation
is always to give pleasure, and I would argue, too, that a poem exhibiting the comic
spirit can be every bit as serious as a poem devoid of laughter."
- Argues there is: "a dangerous if common misconception that a political poem,
or any poem that aspires to move the hearts and minds of men and women,
must be reducible to a paraphrase the length of a slogan
... [But]
We want something more complicated and more lasting from poety.
... Real poetry sustains us."
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:
- "As soon as systems of words are wielded by intentions only, predictable and
paraphrasable, they begin to bore me.
A logophiliacal hunger craves amazement.
And words can blaze! -- most brightly when (like fire)
their logs are interlaced with airs.
They can flow -- or flock -- or fluster."
- "Poetry cares for the means of the meaning business."
- "I am told that the Haida use the same verb to mean both
breathing and the making of a poem."
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:
- "Poems in this present volume originated in relatively
conventional print and online journals.
They have in common their having moved me."
-
"Convincing curves and conversations emerged, and some of the poems
I had originally chosen
turned out not to have a place in the upcropping forcefield.
Uncanny links became apparent."
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).
|
|
2000s
| 0
| 0
| 0
|
|
1990s
| 0
| 0
| 0
|
|
1980s
| 1
| 0
| 0
|
|
1970s
| 10+6=16
| 10+1=11
| 0
|
|
1960s
| 10+3=13
| 10+2=12
| 7
|
|
1950s
| 10+5=15
| 10+4=14
| 10+10+10=30
|
|
1940s
| 10+5=15
| 10+10+3=23
| 10+10=20
|
|
1930s
| 6
| 10
| 5
|
|
1920s
| 6
| 3
| 10+2=12
|
|
1910s
| 1
| 0
| 0
|
|
1900s
| 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:
- Alaska Quarterly Review
- American Poet
- American Poetry Review
- The Antioch Review
- Atlanta Review
- Barrow Street
- Beloit Poetry Journal
- BOMB
- Bookforum
- Colorado Review
- Conduit
- The Cortland Review
- Crazyhorse
- Denver Quarterly
- Fence
- FIELD
- Five Points
- Gulf Coast
- Hanging Loose
- Iowa Review
- The Kenyon Review
- Literary Imagination
- Michigan Quarterly Review
- New American Writing
- The New Criterion
- New England Review
- New Letters
- The New Yorker
- Ploughshares
- Poet Lore
- Poetry
- POOL: A Journal of Poetry
- Raritan
- Rattle
- Sacramento News and Review
- Sentence
- Southwest Review
- Subtropics
- Taupaulin Sky
- the tiny
- TriQuarterly
- Verse
- Verse Daily
- Virginia Quarterly Review
- The Vocabula Review
-
Links and Books.
-
[Thanks for visiting.]
Books read.
