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Rating: 
Summary: An Exceptional Read
Review: David Lehman is one of the most facinating writers, poets, and editors that I have ever read. He is the author of The Daily Mirror, a wonderful and well penned selection of poems. I believe his perspective and talent for finding the best poets lies in his experience. Mr.Lehman is a great editor and any reader who chooses to pick up and read this book will be thankful. One can learn so much from the writers and makers of The Best American Poetry books. I also recommend, his most recent book, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets. I give all these books 5 stars!
Rating: 
Summary: The Best BAP so far
Review: First, to answer the reviewer below as to why no Ashbery, no Ruth Stone: Ashbery has been braindead for years and Ruth Stone is minor, minor, minor, in ambition and in achievement. Not to say that others here won't prove to be minor too, but Dove's anthology is the most stylistically diverse yet(Howard's came close) and its real strength is that instead of including the usual stuff from the usual suspects, she made the effort to find young/emerging poets whose work, taken poem by individual poem, is as interesting if not more so. For example, Olena Kalytiak Davis' poem and Linh Dinh's poem are terrific. No disrespect to the man who revolutionized American poetry--respect, indeed, to the body of his work--but why include rehashed and weaker versions of what he used to write when you can include fresh voices full of energy, pointing forward? Sure, there are plenty of lame poems here, but fewer than usual, and Dove's anthology also feels hugely honest and energetic: she didn't settle for the same old same old but also didn't grind a silly axe. She found what she liked and what she likes is wonderfully wide-ranging. Thanks, Rita!
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Selection
Review: The challenge of having a different distinguished editor each year is that the choices reflect an aesthetic and political bias. I welcomed this year's selections because Rita Dove made no apologies for her diverse list. Readers will like some and dislike some, but that's true for any anthology. I'm dismayed that people expect the same cluster of poets year-to-year; that would only happen if the editor didn't change. And that nonprogessive expectation also reflects the presumption that the same poets write memorable poems every single year of their careers--not so. Frankly, as Charles Simic proclaims, prolific poets are capable of bad poetry. I think Dove's has been the best collection so far because it gives us a taste of the big flavor that is contemporary American poetry. And let me be the first to congratulate her for not including many representatives of that stale vanguard, e.g. Ashbery.
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