The Best American Poetry 2002 (Best American Poetry (Paper))

Rating:
Summary: crazy
Review: I don't think anybody but Robert Creeley & David Lehman would have compiled this selection of poems, & it's an essential volume, full of all kinds of crazy experiments in modern poetry & a few incredibly beautiful brilliant more formalist poems. I think books in the Best American Poetry series are a great way to get to know some of modern poetry, & if you're a writer, to find some journals to submit your work to.

Rating:
Summary: By far the worst of the series
Review: I have never been a fan of Creeley's work ("For Love" is honestly one of the worst poetry books I ever wasted a yard sale dollar on), but I still expected better from his BAP selections, which are totally lacking in flavor. Creeley tries to convert readers to his surrealist style, rife with inaccessible, abstract dream-language, most of which here is narcissistic, utterly incoherent, and reads like the journal ramblings of a Goth teenager. Someone who does not like poetry would not change his/her mind after reading BAP 2002, and that is exactly why I find this collection repugnant. As a poet myself, I have an open mind, experiment with nontraditional modes of writing, and enjoy the surrealist and renegade edge of many contemporary writers. But this edition was useless, both as enjoyable reading and as writing inspiration. 90% of the poems are meaningless, flat, and unfulfilling. Additionally, they were culled almost exclusively from the internet and unheard-of publications. I strongly support small presses and am always eager to sample new publications, but to ignore more established journals which consistently produce quality work feels disrespectful somehow. To be fair, there are a few bright spots in this edition--the poems by Broughton, Burkard, Chapman, Cooley, di Prima, Equi, Friedlander, Gizzi, Goldbarth, Hall, Kumin, Merwin, Myles, Metres, Olds, Sadoff, Warsh, Wier and Wright are worth a second read. But an anthology such as this shouldn't be assessed on the quality of each individual poem, rather on the tone and texture of the whole. The "picture" that BAP 2002 paints is a painful, wasteful, headache-inducing one. Creeley himself says in the introduction, "These poems are better than the best, each and every one of them. If you don't agree, then go find your own." Please, please take his advice.

Rating:
Summary: disappointment
Review: I write competent verse for family and friends, so my daughter asked me why I'm not published and famous. I got her this book from the local library -- having bought a dozen or so of this series and watched it decline, I knew I didn't want to spend my own money for it. We live in New Jersey, so we were of course interested in Amiri Baraka's contribution (he's NJ's poet laureate). It's hard to say which of Baraka's qualities makes the deepest impression: the illiteracy, the meaninglessness, the scatology, or the utter rhythmlessness. She then turned to "The Body", which elicited giggles. And now I discover that it is dangerous to put a book like this in front of a 13-year-old. She's decided that being a poet is a great career path: you don't have to know anything -- you don't even have to be able to write! -- and there's no heavy lifting. As for my daughter's original question: there's no way I could ever -- or would ever want to -- compete with this [stuff]. I have too much respect for myself and for poetry.

Rating:
Summary: Here's my problem....
Review: I've read this series since 1989 or so and have thought it consistently excellent. This volume, however, is almost entirely made of exceptionally eccentric poetry that will alienate almost all readers. As I read it, I kept thinking about this: Somewhere a thoughtful, educated and well-read person decides he or she will finally take time to explore what is going on in today's poetry. Our hypothetical friend goes to his or her local bookseller and finds "The Best American Poetry 2002" and understandably concludes this is an ideal book with which to start. It would likely be his or her last purchase of contemporary poetry. It's very much unbalanced and is simply not at all representative of poetry in 2002. The editor indulges his own taste for the inaccessible and quirky with no consideration for the task of presenting, well, "The Best American Poetry."

Rating:
Summary: Not the Best American Poetry at all
Review: It's time to give it up. And we don't mean Arsenio Hall style. Quit. Go home. Keep your ball. If this is The Best American Poetry...your neighborhood Sinclair Station...the one with the 2 bay service garage...is an International Oil Cartel. I doubt that even the "old school" poetry fops..(the ones Harold Bloom has been kissing all these years)...I doubt they're even buying this tired, limp, biscuit anymore. If the "cut rate" price or 2-for-1 sale doesn't sell 'em...save it for the parrots.

Rating:
Summary: By far the worst of the series
Review: Reader take note: if you are curious about contemporary poetry and are looking for an interesting place to start, this anthology is not for you. Try 2001 or 2003. Skip 2002. One of the interesting things about this series is discovering the guest editor, always a notable contemporary poet, as reader of contemporary poetry. What exactly was Robert Creeley thinking? Most of the poems in this volume are emminently forgettable; others unreadable. I enjoy reading this anthology every year, but in this case it was a real struggle.

Rating:
Summary: An Unsurprising Disappointment
Review: Reader take note: if you are curious about contemporary poetry and are looking for an interesting place to start, this anthology is not for you. Try 2001 or 2003. Skip 2002. One of the interesting things about this series is discovering the guest editor, always a notable contemporary poet, as reader of contemporary poetry. What exactly was Robert Creeley thinking? Most of the poems in this volume are emminently forgettable; others unreadable. I enjoy reading this anthology every year, but in this case it was a real struggle.

Rating:
Summary: People can get so hostile
Review: There are basically two schools of American poetry these days. One descends from the postromantic lyric, the other from Black Mountain (by way of the Pisan Cantos) where only language (not content, not anecdote) counts. This collection contains mostly poems by poets who have an extraordinary gift for free-association. Very few of these poems make any contextual sense and fewer still make any _grammatical_ sense. Are these the "best" poems of 2002? Not by a country mile. In fact, try imagining readers in 2050 reading this book. How many of these poems will endure? How many will resonate in the minds of the average college student fifty years hence? To be sure, choosing the "best" of anything is always a reflection of the editor, but Mr. Creeley has lost all sense of judiciousness and cultural perspective here. Most of the choices here are simply incomprehensible. They are the random babblings of massively gifted poets with little or nothing to say. And what little they do have to say is unmemorable. Blah.

Rating:
Summary: No More Creely
Review: This has been a wonderful series of books, a great way to keep abreast of where current American poetry is going - and I'm sure it will be again. Unfortunatley this edition doesn't measure up. The reason for this failure falls at the feet of the editor, Robert Creely. I understand an editor's desire to place his own stamp on such a work. Furthermore, if that weren't the idea behind the series, it wouldn't have a new editor ever year. That said, I have to say that Creely put far too much of his own mark on this year's edition. Unless you happen to really enjoy Creely's own poetry, you probably will not enjoy this book. It reads like a collection of his own work. About every tenth poem I feel like I have a clue what the author is trying to say. All the rest amount to little more than gratuitous verbal fireworks, pointless word plays, excessive alliteration, and general self-absorbed drivel. In the future I hope series editors will try to bring us once again a broad collection of what is great in current American poetry, not simply one marginal poet's collection of the poems he happened to like that year.