The Best American Poetry 2019

David Lehman, Major Jackson

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781982106577
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982106584
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Dilruba Ahmed, “Phase One”
• Rosa Alcalá, “You & the Raw Bullets”
• Margaret Atwood, “Update on Werewolves”
• Catherine Barnett, “Central Park”
• Joshua Bennett, “America Will Be”
• Fleda Brown, “Afternoons at the Lake”
• Sumita Chakraborty, “Essay on Joy”
• Victoria Chang, “Six Obits”
• Chen Chen, “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party”
• Leonard Cohen, “Drank a Lot”
• Laura Cronk, “Like a Cat”
• Kate Daniels, “Metaphor-less”
• Carl Dennis, “Armed Neighbor”
• Toi Derricotte, “An apology to the reader”
• Thomas Devaney, “Brilliant Corners”
• Natalie Diaz, “Skin-Light”
• Joanne Dominique Dwyer, “Decline in the Adoration of Jack-in-the-Pulpits”
• Martín Espada, “I Now Pronounce You Dead”
• Nausheen Eusuf, “The Analytic Hour”
• Vievee Francis, “Canzone in Blue, Then Bluer”
• Gabriela Garcia, “Guantanamera”
• Amy Gerstler, “Update”
• Camille Guthrie, “Virgil, Hey”
• Yona Harvey, “Dark and Lovely After Take-Off (A Future)”
• Robert Hass, “Dancing”
• Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin”
• Juan Felipe Herrera, “Roll Under the Waves”
• Edward Hirsch, “Stranger by Night”
• Jane Hirshfield, “Ledger”
• James Hoch, “Sunflowers”
• Bob Holman, “All Praise Cecil Taylor”
• Garrett Hongo, “The Bathers, Cassis”
• Ishion Hutchinson, “Sympathy of a Clear Day”
• Didi Jackson, “The Burning Bush”
• Major Jackson, “In Memory of Derek Alton Walcott”
• Ilya Kaminsky, “from ‘Last Will and Testament’ ”
• Ruth Ellen Kocher, “We May No Longer Consider the End”
• Deborah Landau, “Soft Targets”
• Quraysh Ali Lansana, “Higher Calling”
• Li-Young Lee, “The Undressing”
• David Lehman, “It Could Happen to You”
• Ada Limón, “Cannibal Woman”
• Rebecca Lindenberg, “A Brief History of the Future Apocalypse”
• Nabila Lovelace, “The S in ‘I Loves You, Porgy’ ”
• Clarence Major, “Hair”
• Gail Mazur, “At Land’s End”
• Shane McCrae, “The President Visits the Storm”
• Jeffrey McDaniel, “Bio from a Parallel World”
• Campbell McGrath, “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool/The Founding of Brasilia (1950)”
• Ange Mlinko, “Sleepwalking in Venice”
• Kamilah Aisha Moon, “Fannie Lou Hamer”
• Andrew Motion, “The Last of England”
• Paul Muldoon, “Aubade”
• John Murillo, “On Confessionalism”
• Naomi Shihab Nye, “You Are Your Own State Department”
• Sharon Olds, “Rasputin Aria”
• Michael Palmer, “Nord-Sud”
• Morgan Parker, “The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady & The Dead & The Truth”
• Willie Perdomo, “Head Crack Head Crack”
• Carl Phillips, “Star Map with Action Figures”
• Ishmael Reed, “Just Rollin’ Along”
• Paisley Rekdal, “Four Marys”
• Sonia Sanchez, “Belly, Buttocks, and Straight Spines”
• Nicole Santalucia, “#MeToo”
• Philip Schultz, “The Women’s March”
• Lloyd Schwartz, “Vermeer’s Pearl”
• Alan Shapiro, “Encore”
• Jane Shore, “Who Knows One”
• Tracy K. Smith, “The Greatest Personal Privation”
• A. E. Stallings, “Harm’s Way”
• Arthur Sze, “The White Orchard”
• Natasha Trethewey, “Duty”
• Ocean Vuong, “Partly True Poem Reflected in a Mirror”
• David Wojahn, “Still Life: Stevens’s Wallet on a Key West Hotel Dresser”
• Kevin Young, “Hive”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editors
• Copyright