The Best American Poetry 2021

(Paperback)

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The 2021 edition of the leading collection of contemporary American poetry is guest edited by the former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, providing renewed proof that this is a best anthology that really lives up to its title (Chicago Tribune).

Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a choice of the years most memorable poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work. The guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2021 is Tracy K. Smith, the former United States Poet Laureate, whose own poems are, Toi Derricottes words, beautiful and serene in their surfaces with an underlying sense of an unknown vastness. In The Best American Poetry 2021, Smith has selected a distinguished array of works both vast and beautiful by such important voices as Henri Cole, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Nobel laureate Louise Glck, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.

Reviews

This annual anthology touches on Covid, George Floyd and much else thats timely and timeless, with work from Louise Glck, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limn and others.--The New York Times

Author Bio

David Lehman, the series editor ofThe Best American Poetry, editedTheOxford Book of American Poetry. His eleven books of poetry includeThe Morning Line,Playlist,Poems in the Manner Of,New and Selected Poems,When a Woman Loves a Man,andThe Daily Mirror.The most recent of his many nonfiction books isThe Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Tracy K. Smith, guest editor, served as United States Poet Laureate from 20172019 and is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry, including, most recently,Wade in the WaterandLife on Mars, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2012. Her memoir,Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015. Educated at Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford, she isthe Roger S. Berlind 52 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.