[R. S. Gwynn]

Another rant:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-s..._b_610170.html

[John Beaton]

And one worth listening to.

[Dan Breene]

What a godawful mess. It's no wonder people (well educated, intelligent, imaginative people) equate reading poetry with punishment. And most poetry readings are so boring you can feel your hair grow. And that's not because most poets are inept at presenting their material. It's because they're tedious hacks. The sheer fraudulence of it all is mind boggling.

[Julie Steiner]

Well, Alan Sullivan's excellent villanelle about cancer was in there, too...but I was pretty disappointed with the rest of the book.

I bought it without perusing it first, and ended up donating it to the Friends of the Library sale within a week or so...

[Ed Shacklee]

There's not much to be done for it, I suppose, if it has become a 'coterie affair' as Mr. Shivani asserts, but an obligation to be thorough ought to come with taking a title like Best American Poetry. There's a lot of poetry published in America; even discounting the myriad online and print magazines, which would be a bad idea, the number of books that come out every year must run into the hundreds.

I haven't picked up the book, but I wonder if the forward sets out the winnowing process that was used by the editors. Or perhaps there's an interview where this subject is addressed?

Ed

[Gregory Dowling]

I'm sure Shivani makes some very good points but I'm made a little wary of his critical judgement by a parenthetical half-sentence like this one: "... as The New Yorker culls gorgeous little unwanted turds from the likes of W. S. Merwin and Richard Wilbur."

[Tim Murphy]

Oh screw Shivani. Alan's gorgeous villanelle was a rare exception in a book which is so bad, year after year, it's a wonder it stays in print.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Editing The Best American Poetry (Lehmann is the series editor; each annual volume has its own editor) must be a pretty ridiculous chore. I'm happy that a few poems I've enjoyed manage to make it in.

[Quincy Lehr]

Greg--

In fairness, the recent Wilbur and Merwin poems I've seen in The New Yorker have ranged from not up to scratch to not very good. The New Yorker has by now a long and hoary tradition of printing crappish poems by well-known, accomplished poets.

[John Whitworth]

I have invented a way of deciding whether this sort of anthology is worth your money. How many of the poems rhyme and scan? If the percenage is less than 25 then forget it. The good thing about this rule is that you don't have to actually READ the garbage in order to judge it, thus leaving more time for important things like entering New Statesman competitions and considering the cricket.

Well, it works for me, though privately I up the bar to fifty per cent before I actually PAY for the thing.