An anthology of contemporary poets presents works that reflect the diversity in American poetry 2002.

Award-winning poet David Wagoner and renowned editor David Lehman present the 2009 edition of Best American Poetry—"a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune). Eagerly anticipated by scholars, students, readers, and poets alike, Scribner’s Best American Poetry series has achieved brand-name status in the literary world, serving as a yearly guide to who’s who in American poetry. Known for his marvelous narrative skill and humane wit, David Wagoner is one of the few poets of his generation to win the universal admiration of his peers. Working in conjunction with series editor David Lehman, Wagoner brings his refreshing eye to this year’s anthology. With new work by established poets, such as Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Mark Doty, and Bob Hicok, The Best American Poetry 2009 also features some of tomorrow’s leading luminaries. Readers of all ages and backgrounds will treasure this illuminating collection of modern American verse. With its high-profile editorship and its generous embrace of American poetry in all its exuberant variety, the Best American Poetry series continues to be, as Robert Pinsky says, "as good a comprehensive overview of contemporary poetry as there can be."

The 2019 edition of The Best American Poetry—“one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets)—now guest edited by Major Jackson, award-winning poet and poetry editor of the Harvard Review. Since 1988, The Best American Poetry has been the leading anthology of contemporary American poetry. The Washington Post said of the 2017 edition, “The poems...have a wonderful cohesion and flow, as if each contributes to a larger narrative about life today…While readers may question some of the selections—an annual sport with this series—most will find much that resonates, including the insightful author notes at the back of the anthology.” The state of the world has inspired many to write poetry, and to read it—to share all the rage, beauty, and every other thing under the sun in the way that only poetry can. Now the foremost anthology of contemporary American poetry returns, guest edited by Major Jackson, the poet and editor who, “makes poems that rumble and rock” (poet Dorianne Laux). This brilliant 2019 edition includes some of the year’s most defining, striking, and innovative poems and poets.

Mark Doty brings the vitality and imagination that illuminate his own work to his selections for the twenty-fifth volume in the Best American Poetry series. He has chosen poems of high moral earnestness and poems in a comic register; poems that tell stories and poems that test the boundaries of innovative composition. This landmark edition includes David Lehman’s keen look at American poetry in his foreword, Mark Doty’s gorgeous introduction, and notes from the poets revealing the germination of their work. Over the last twenty-five years, The Best American Poetry has become an annual rite of the poetry world, and this year’s anthology is a welcome and essential addition to the series. SHERMAN ALEXIE * KAREN LEONA ANDERSON * RAE ARMANTROUT * JULIANNA BAGGOTT * DAVID BAKER * RICK BAROTt REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS * FRANK BIDART * BRUCE BOND * STEPHANIE BROWN * ANNE CARSON * JENNIFER CHANG * JOSEPH CHAPMAN * HEATHER CHRISTLE * HENRI COLE * BILLY COLLINS * PETER COOLEY * EDUARDO C. CORRAL * ERICA DAWSON * STEPHEN DUNN * ELAINE EQUI * ROBERT GIBB * KATHLEEN GRABER * AMY GLYNN GREACEN * JAMES ALLEN HALL * TERRANCE HAYES * STEVEN HEIGHTON * BRENDA HILLMAN * JANE HIRSHFIELD * RICHARD HOWARD * MARIE HOWE * AMORAK HUEY * JENNY JOHNSON * LAWRENCE JOSEPH * FADY JOUDAH * JOY KATZ * JAMES KIMBRELL * NOELLE KOCOT * MAXINE KUMIN * SARAH LINDSAY * AMIT MAJMUDAR * DAVID MASON * KERRIN McCADDEN * HONOR MOORE * MICHAEL MORSE * CAROL MUSKE-DUKES * ANGELO NIKOLOPOULOS * MARY OLIVER * STEVE ORLEN * ALICIA OSTRIKER * ERIC PANKEY * LUCIA PERILLO * ROBERT PINSKY * DEAN RADER * SPENCER REECE * PAISLEY REKDAL * MARY RUEFLE * DON RUSS * KAY RYAN * MARY JO SALTER * LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ * FREDERICK SEIDEL * BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY * PETER JAY SHIPPY * TRACY K. SMITH * BRUCE SNIDER * MARK STRAND * LARISSA SZPORLUK * DANIEL TOBIN * NATASHA TRETHEWEY * SUSAN WHEELER * FRANZ WRIGHT * DAVID YEZZI * DEAN YOUNG * KEVIN YOUNG

Since Whitman and Dickinson, most of the major poetry in the United States has been written against the literary establishments and prevailing canons of taste, and often far from the cultural centers. This is the first anthology in many years to gather the work from this continuing tradition of innovators and outsiders, presenting poets and poems that are still excluded from the academic collections. Opening with the last poems of the Modernist masters Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and H.D., the book follows through four generations of writers who have been the primary figures of the new poetries and poetics since 1950. With a historical afterword, complete bibliographies, and generous selections from each of the thirty-five poets, this anthology is the only available introduction to the poets connected with such groups and movements as the Objectivists, the Beats, Black Mountain, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance, and ethnopoetics. American Poetry Since 1950 is a new map of the territory, an array of known and unknown contemporary classics. It is full of strange texts and startling procedures, histories and natural histories, high lyricism and extended meditations - extraordinary works that challenge our notions of what a poem ought to be.

The eagerly anticipated new edition of the yearly anthology of contemporary American poetry is now a brand name in the literary world.

Robert Pinsky, distinguished poet and man of letters, selects the top 100 poems from twenty-five years of The Best American Poetry This special edition celebrates twenty-five years of the Best American Poetry series, which has become an institution. From its inception in 1988, it has been hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced), and obsessively scrutinized. Each volume consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major American poet acting as guest editor—from John Ashbery in 1988 to Mark Doty in 2012, with stops along the way for such poets as Charles Simic, A. R. Ammons, Louise Glück, Adrienne Rich, Billy Collins, Heather McHugh, and Kevin Young. Out of the 1,875 poems that have appeared in The Best American Poetry, here are 100 that Robert Pinsky, the distinguished poet and man of letters, has chosen for this milestone edition.

AMY GERSTLER’S COMMITMENT TO INNOVATIVE POETRY that conveys meaning, feeling, wit, and humor informs the cross section of poems in the 2010 edition of The Best American Poetry. The works collected here represent the wealth, the breadth, and the tremendous energy of poetry in the United States today. Featuring poems from some of our country’s top bards, including John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Louise Glück, Sharon Olds, and Charles Simic, The Best American Poetry 2010 also presents poems that poignantly capture the current moment, such as the sonnets John Updike wrote to chronicle his dying weeks. And there are exciting poems from a constellation of rising stars: Bob Hicok, Terrance Hayes, Denise Duhamel, Dean Young, and Elaine Equi, to name a very few. The anthology’s mainstays are in place: It opens with series editor David Lehman’s incisive foreword about the state of American poetry and has a marvelous introduction by Amy Gerstler. Notes from the poets, illuminating their poems and their writing processes, conclude this delightful addition to a classic series. Dick Allen * John Ashbery * Sandra Beasley * Mark Bibbins * Todd Boss * Fleda Brown * Anne Carson * Tom Clark * David Clewell * Michael Collier * Billy Collins * Dennis Cooper * Kate Daniels * Peter Davis * Tim Dlugos * Denise Duhamel * Thomas Sayers Ellis * Lynn Emanuel * Elaine Equi * Jill Alexander Essbaum * B. H. Fairchild * Vievee Francis * Louise Glück * Albert Goldbarth * Amy Glynn Greacen * Sonia Greenfield * Kelle Groom * Gabriel Gudding * Kimiko Hahn * Barbara Hamby * Terrance Hayes * Bob Hicok * Rodney Jones * Michaela Kahn * Brigit Pegeen Kelly * Corinne Lee * Hailey Leithauser * Dolly Lemke * Maurice Manning * Adrian Matejka * Shane McCrae * Jeffrey McDaniel * W. S. Merwin * Sarah Murphy * Eileen Myles * Camille Norton * Alice Notley * Sharon Olds * Gregory Pardlo * Lucia Perillo * Carl Phillips * Adrienne Rich * James Richardson * J. Allyn Rosser * James Schuyler * Tim Seibles * David Shapiro * Charles Simic * Frank Stanford * Gerald Stern * Stephen Campbell Sutherland * James Tate * David Trinidad * Chase Twichell * John Updike * Derek Walcott * G. C. Waldrep * J. E. Wei * Dara Wier * Terence Winch * Catherine Wing * Mark Wunderlich * Matthew Yeager * Dean Young * Kevin Young

Collects poems chosen by the editors as the best of 2014, featuring works by John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Mary Ruefle, Frederick Seidel, and others.

This comprehensive chronological anthology includes 58 essays on poetry by 53 poets. Starting with James Weldon Johnson and Robert Frost, the book offers diverse and often conflicting accounts of the nature and function of poetry. The collection includes rarely anthologized essays by Jack Spicer, Rhina Espaillat, Anne Stevenson, and Ron Silliman, as well as work by some of the finest younger critics in America, including William Logan, Alice Fulton, and Christian Wiman.