The Best American Poetry 2023

David Lehman, Elaine Equi

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781982186777
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Award-winning poet Elaine Equi selects the poems for the 2023 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).

Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents some of the year’s most striking and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering insight into their work.

For The Best American Poetry 2023 guest editor Elaine Equi, whose own work is “deft, delicate [and] subversive” (August Kleinzahler), has made astute choices representing contemporary poetry at its most dynamic. The result is an exceptionally coherent vision of American poetry today.

Including valuable introductory essays contributed by the series and guest editors, the 2023 volume is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Will Alexander, “The Bluish Mathematics of Darkness”
• 2. Michael Anania, “Covering Stan Getz”
• 3. Rae Armantrout, “Fortune”
• 4. W. H. Auden, “ ‘We get the Dialectic fairly well’ ”
• 5. Martine Bellen, “A Deafening Prayer”
• 6. Charles Bernstein, “Three Poems”
• 7. Mark Bibbins, “from 13th Balloon”
• 8. Lee Ann Brown, “That’s American”
• 9. Kameryn Alexa Carter, “Antediluvian”
• 10. Guillermo Filice Castro, “Yes,”
• 11. Marianne Chan, “The Shape of Biddle City”
• 12. Victoria Chang, “World’s End”
• 13. Maxine Chernoff, “The Songbird Academy”
• 14. Kwame Dawes, “Photo Shoot”
• 15. Alex Dimitrov, “The Years”
• 16. Stuart Dischell, “After the Exhibition”
• 17. Timothy Donnelly, “Instagram”
• 18. Boris Dralyuk, “Days at the Races”
• 19. Joanna Fuhrman, “330 College Avenue”
• 20. Amy Gerstler, “Night Herons”
• 21. Peter Gizzi, “Revisionary”
• 22. Herbert Gold, “Other News on Page 24”
• 23. Terrance Hayes, “Strange as the Rules of Grammar”
• 24. Robert Hershon, “All Right”
• 25. Paul Hoover, “Admonitions, Afternoons”
• 26. Shelley Jackson, “Best Original Enigma in Verse”
• 27. Patricia Spears Jones, “The Devil’s Wife Explains Broken 45s”
• 28. Ilya Kaminsky, “I Ask That I Do Not Die”
• 29. Vincent Katz, “A Marvelous Sky”
• 30. John Keene, “Straight, No Chaser”
• 31. Miho Kinnas, “Three Shrimp Boats on the Horizon”
• 32. Wayne Koestenbaum, “[Misread ‘master craftsman’]”
• 33. Yusef Komunyakaa, “from Autobiography of My Alter Ego”
• 34. Michael Lally, “I Meant To”
• 35. Dorothea Lasky, “Green Moon”
• 36. David Lehman, “Traces”
• 37. Ada Limón, “Hooky”
• 38. J. Estanislao Lopez, “Places with Terrible Wi-Fi”
• 39. Kimberly Lyons, “Coffee with Lavender”
• 40. Bernadette Mayer, “Pi-Day”
• 41. Maureen N. McLane, “Moonrise”
• 42. Dunya Mikhail, “Tablets VI”
• 43. Stephen Paul Miller, “Dating Buddha”
• 44. Susan Mitchell, “Chopin in Palma”
• 45. Valzhyna Mort, “Extraordinary Life of Tadeusz Kościuszko in Several Invoices”
• 46. Harryette Mullen, “As I Wander Lonely in the Cloud”
• 47. Kathleen Ossip, “The Facts”
• 48. Eugene Ostashevsky, “from The Feeling Sonnets”
• 49. Yuko Otomo, “Sunday Cave”
• 50. Maureen Owen, “In space surface tension will force / a small blob of liquid to form a sphere”
• 51. Xan Phillips, “Film Theory”
• 52. Katha Pollitt, “Brown Furniture”
• 53. Carolyn Marie Rodgers, “Poem No. 2: My Kind of Feminism”
• 54. Jerome Sala, “Something I’ve Not Bought”
• 55. Jason Schneiderman, “Dramaturgy”
• 56. Tim Seibles, “All the Time Blues Villanelle”
• 57. Diane Seuss, “Little Fugue (State)”
• 58. David Shapiro, “A Lost Poem of Jesus”
• 59. Mitch Sisskind, “Only Death Wows Me”
• 60. Jack Skelley, “Green Goddess”
• 61. Amanda Smeltz, “These Squatting Girls in Black Spandex”
• 62. Cole Swensen, “Various Gloves”
• 63. Arthur Sze, “Wildfire Season”
• 64. Diane Thiel, “Listening in Deep Space”
• 65. Rodrigo Toscano, “Full Haunt”
• 66. Tony Trigilio, “The Steeplejack”
• 67. David Trinidad, “The Poems Attributed to Him May Be by Different Poets”
• 68. Anne Waldman, “Three Poems from 13 Moons Kora”
• 69. Sarah Anne Wallen, “I can see Mars”
• 70. Elizabeth Willis, “And What My Species Did”
• 71. Terence Winch, “Great Sizzle”
• 72. Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, “Sweepstake”
• 73. John Yau, “Song for Mie Yim”
• 74. Geoffrey Young, “Parallel Bars”
• 75. Matthew Zapruder, “The Empty Grave of Zsa Zsa Gabor”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Copyright