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Rating: 
Summary: Beauty that is poetry...!
Review: ...And if there is a democracy in writing, indeed, it is poetry. The Best American Poetry 2001 is a compilation of great poems from various writers and covers wide range of subjects, from sad to happy and from abstract to everyday situation proems are covered in this great book. Some poems touch your heart, others make you laugh, and some leave an everlasting impact upon you... best part is that all of them co-exist in this great book. This book is the best companion that a young developing poet can have, this book is the best refenrence a mature poet could use... and this very book is something that a very common man can refer to. Poetry starts where prose ends, it can say one paragraph in a few words... it can summarize an article into a stanza. It can trigger a war of words and it has the power to hold great romance in form of sonnets. Poetry is something that all of us associate to... some refer to it in the hour of crisis, the others turn to it in the moment of celebration. This book is indeed deep... it could well be termed a perfect mosaic, an extraordinary collage, a magically colourful painting... one that has been completed by many great artists, and it is a book that could leave an impact of many young writers who could well be the future artists. The Best American Poetry 2001 is a must to read - Its somethig that we have to keep!
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Summary: Ponderous frivolity predominates
Review: As alphabetical order would have it, the anthology begins with Nin Andrews's poem about "pussies" (anatomical, not feline), which she graces with the title "Notes for a Sermon on the Mount," a baker's dozen of flip apothegms, among them: "One must never pray to pussies. Or other golden heifers. Nor should one ask God to send forth a pussy to help minister to one's soul." Good for a chuckle at the author's chutzpah. John Ashbery is here, surely the Meryl Streep of this series (when the Academy doesn't know who else to nominate, Miss Streep always gets a nod). Ultraephemera by Ball, Bang & Clover: the most rambunctious law firm in the Etats-Unis; stately quatrains by Robert Creeley, each line centered in the page; Thomas Sayers Ellis's piece describing Yaddo as "minus-da-groove"; Donald Hall's excellent, modest, humble, craftsmanlike elegy "Her Garden," acknowledging a debt to Thomas Hardy; the coolish prosodic perfections of Anthony Hecht and John Hollander; the thing by Jorie Graham which, if you like, you can call a poem; Galway Kinnell's magnetizing "Quick and the Dead" with archaic Saxon vocables and newly invented ones, summoning to mind John Clare's prog; a poem of calculated desultoriness by Kenneth Koch, a poem of ponderous eroticism by Elizabeth Bishop (this poet, departed nearly six quadrennia ago, can write about sex in an explicit manner and still come up with a poem that reminds this reader of a doily): John Koethe and J D McClatchy offer us sturdy feasibilities in the grand manner (Koethe reminding us of Wallace Stevens, McClatchy of Auden or of James Merrill); Heather McHugh amuses in her brief, etymologically clever piece; one cannot find an excuse for the existence of James Tate's poetic reputation; John Peck and Robert Pinsky are serious poets whose strength does not come from a gimcrack flashiness; who is this Alice Notley dame?; Allen Grossman, Adrienne Rich & James Schuyler raise their hands and shout "present!" (though one is, in fact, absent); as do Charles Simic and Amina Calil (her poem is a poem). Alan Feldman pays tribute in an affecting fashion to Donald Hall's "Kicking the Leaves."In the endearing preface by the series editor, David Lehman cites numerous instances of how poetry, great and not-so-great, impinges upon the popular culture oftener than we think. Lehman even sneaks a slippery villanelle of his own into the preface. And Robert Hass patiently defends his manner of choosing the poems for this year's edition; some readers might agree that many of the choices need defending. We recommend this book only to those inveterate readers of contemporary poetry who must have every single proffering of this annual series, lest they lose sleep. We recall Donald Hall's assignment to poets in an essay fifteen years old, "Be as good a poet as George Herbert; take as long as you like." I'll settle for Wallace Stevens or Estlin Cummings. How many poets in BAP 2001 have this noble ambition, which places durance above trend, and dismisses cynical cool as an amateur's game? Fifty years hence, will we know our Ball from our Bang? Unlikely.
Rating:
Summary: Another fantastic installment
Review: BAP 2001 continues the tradition established by previous volumes by presenting great poetry from well-known, lesser-known, and unknown American poets. True, no annual volume of poetry can collect all of the "best" poems published that year, but the BEST AMERICAN POETRY series comes awfully close. This collection is just as diverse as past collections: John Ashbery shuffles alongside Thomas Sayers Ellis, Billy Collins plays in the snow, Anne Carson longs, watching Christopher Edgar drifting in the clouds. Donald Hall's poem "Her Garden" is heartbreaking and nearly perfect. Yusef Komunyakaa, Haryette Mullen, and Robert Bly also show up and there's a beautiful banter abounding. David Lehman has written another funny and insightful foreword and Robert Hass fulfills the guest editor's job of distancing himself as much as possible from the claim of the series' title. This is a fantastic collection, an indespensible series, and one that should be read if you want to discover the current, vibrant, thriving state of American poetry.
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Summary: Poetry to the Rescue
Review: In a time of struggle we turn to poems, at least I do, and there are poems here that make me feel that poetry has so many disguises, so many different "looks," that it mirrors the vast diversity of this great land in that noble respect. No one can like them all equally but we can be glad they exist. I love the comic poems, poems of charm and wit, and am less crazy about the dry academic "languagey" poems, but that's just me. The essay by Robert Hass is superb and the foreword by the series editor has so much energy and information it's a delight. Maybe no poem in the book is as great as Auden's "September 1, 1939," but if you read Ashbury, or Donald Hall, or Adrienne Rich, or Robert Creeley, or Olena Kalytiak Davis, you'll feel in your heart of hearts that indeed "we must love one another and die," and for as noble a cause as freedom, if not joy, poetry and life itself. Heartily recommended.
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Summary: The usual best and worst of poetry
Review: Nearly every edition in this series contains I like and poems I hate. It really does depend on the editor's tastes. Since Hass is big on ambiguity, language poetry, and fragmented narratives, many of the poems here follow that. My favorites include: Bly, Rich, Lydia Davis, James Galvin. I think overall this is one of the top few books in this series. I can already see that I'm not going to like the 2002 edited by Creeley
Rating:
Summary: pretty academic
Review: Normally, I love these "best of" collections. It provides a broad enough poetry base, so that the average reader can find some poetry that they really connect with and pursue. This volume does that for sure, but in the words of the Hass (the editor) he felt stifled under the structure of the book. He had some interesting ideas about grouping the poems by year, or by the age of the poet. But alas, structure prevails and the poems are in alphabetical order of the author's last name. Is it worth it? Of course it is. Will it blow the top off of your head? Probably not.
Rating: 
Summary: What is poetry?
Review: There has been much debate over the past ten years of what constitutes poetry. This book involves a broad scope of what is now considered poetry and why very few people "like" poetry. To sum it up, "good grief!"
Rating:
Summary: Poetry to the Rescue
Review: This series is becoming more and more boring with time. The main reason is that it is more and more "intelectual" and smells university. Many poems are well written by today's standards, but that may just be the best way to write a bad poem. A bad poem can be considered good literature, but many good ones were considered in their time bad literature. I didn't buy this book, I read a lot of pages in the store and didn't even find three poems to make me part from my 15 bucks. The other volumes I have just sit in my library and just one or two poems in the 4 volumes I have really hit the score and make want to come back again. Want a good american anthology? Then go fot Alan kaufman's "The Outlaw bible of American poetry". Another good one is the "vintage book of American poetry". I hope someone tries to compete with this series because there is a lot of great stuff going on, the editors here seem to be fishing in the wrong waters.
Rating:
Summary: a sorry disappointment
Review: When i looked at the table of contents, i saw a pretty impressive list of poets and quite a few surprises. then i read hass's essay, which was great. the problem is hass's taste in poetry. very few of the poems in here should have even been considered for this volume. even from poes who have proved time and again that they are good poets have bad poems in here. beside hass's introduction, the only redeeming part of the book is the contributor's notes and comments.
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