The Best American Poetry 2021

David Lehman, Tracy K. Smith

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781982106621
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982106645
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

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 year's 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 Derricotte's 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 Glück, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Rosa Alcalá, “The Pyramid Scheme”
• 2. Lauren K. Alleyne, “Divination”
• 3. Jabari Asim, “Some Call It God”
• 4. Joshua Bennett, “Benediction”
• 5. Destiny O. Birdsong, “love poem that ends at popeyes”
• 6. Susan Briante, “Further Exercises”
• 7. Jericho Brown, “Work”
• 8. Christopher Buckley, “After Tu Fu”
• 9. Victoria Chang, “Marfa, Texas”
• 10. Chen Chen, “The School of Eternities”
• 11. Su Cho, “Abecedarian for ESL in West Lafayette, Indiana”
• 12. Ama Codjoe, “After the Apocalypse”
• 13. Henri Cole, “Gross National Unhappiness”
• 14. Billy Collins, “On the Deaths of Friends”
• 15. Adam O. Davis, “Interstate Highway System”
• 16. Kwame Dawes, “Before the Riot”
• 17. Toi Derricotte, “The Great Beauty”
• 18. Jay Deshpande, “A Child’s Guide to Grasses”
• 19. Natalie Diaz, “lake-loop”
• 20. Alex Dimitrov, “Love”
• 21. Rita Dove, “Naji, 14. Philadelphia.”
• 22. Camille T. Dungy, “This’ll hurt me more”
• 23. Louise Erdrich, “Stone Love”
• 24. Kathy Fagan, “Conqueror”
• 25. Chanda Feldman, “They Ran and Flew from You”
• 26. Nikky Finney, “I Feel Good”
• 27. Louise Glück, “Night School”
• 28. Nancy Miller Gomez, “Tilt-A-Whirl”
• 29. Jorie Graham, “I Won’t Live Long”
• 30. Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “Hunger”
• 31. Francine J. Harris, “Sonata in F Minor, K.183: Allegro”
• 32. Terrance Hayes, “George Floyd”
• 33. Edward Hirsch, “Waste Management”
• 34. Ishion Hutchinson, “David”
• 35. Didi Jackson, “Two Mule Deer”
• 36. Major Jackson, “Double Major”
• 37. Amaud Jamaul Johnson, “So Much for America”
• 38. Yusef Komunyakaa, “Wheelchair”
• 39. Dana Levin, “Immigrant Song”
• 40. Ada Limón, “The End of Poetry”
• 41. James Longenbach, “In the Village”
• 42. Warren C. Longmire, “Meditations on a Photograph of Historic Rail Women”
• 43. Emily Lee Luan, “When My Sorrow Was Born”
• 44. Dora Malech, “All the Stops”
• 45. Sally Wen Mao, “Playing Dead”
• 46. Francisco Márquez, “Provincetown”
• 47. Hannah Marshall, “This Is a Love Poem to Trees”
• 48. Shane McCrae, “The Hastily Assembled Angel on Care and Vitality”
• 49. Lupe Mendez, “There Is Only You”
• 50. Francine Merasty, “Since Time Immemorial”
• 51. Yesenia Montilla, “a brief meditation on breath”
• 52. Kamilah Aisha Moon, “Irony”
• 53. Stanley Moss, “A Smiling Understanding”
• 54. Dg Nanouk Okpik, “When White Hawks Come”
• 55. Cecily Parks, “December”
• 56. Patrick Phillips, “Elegy with Table Saw & Cobwebs”
• 57. Roger Reeves, “For Black Children at the End of the World—and the Beginning”
• 58. Ed Roberson, “For Air”
• 59. Margaret Ross, “Blood”
• 60. Angbeen Saleem, “black and brown people on shark tank”
• 61. Nicole Sealey, “Pages 5–8” (An excerpt from ‘The Ferguson Report: An Erasure’)
• 62. Evie Shockley, “women’s voting rights at one hundred (but who’s counting?)”
• 63. Darius Simpson, “What Is There to Do in Akron, Ohio?”
• 64. Patricia Smith, “The Stuff of Astounding: A Golden Shovel for Juneteenth”
• 65. Monica Sok, “Ode to the Boy Who Jumped Me”
• 66. Adrienne Su, “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”
• 67. Arthur Sze, “Acequia del Llano”
• 68. Paul Tran, “Copernicus”
• 69. Phuong T. Vuong, “The Beginning of the Beginning”
• 70. John Sibley Williams, “The Dead Just Need to Be Seen. Not Forgiven.”
• 71. L. Ash Williams, “Red Wine Spills”
• 72. Shelley Wong, “How to Live in Southern California”
• 73. John Yau, “Overnight”
• 74. Monica Youn, “Caution” (from “Deracinations: Seven Sonigrams”)
• 75. Kevin Young, “Dog Tags”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Copyright