The Best American Poetry 2007

Series Editor David Lehman

David Lehman, Heather McHugh, David Lehman, Heather McHugh

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780743299725
• eBook ISBN:
  9781416568353
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The twentieth edition of The Best American poetry series celebrates the rich and fertile landscape of American poetry. Renowned poet Heather McHugh loves words and the unexpected places they take you; her own poetry elevates wordplay to a species of metaphysical wit. For this year's anthology McHugh has culled a spectacular group of poems reflecting her passion for language, her acumen, and her vivacious humor.

From the thousands of poems published or posted in one year, McHugh has chosen seventy-five that fully engage the reader while illustrating the formal and tonal diversity of American poetry. With new work by established poets such as Louise Glück, Robert Hass, and Richard Wilbur, The Best American Poetry 2007 also features such younger talents as Ben Lerner, Meghan O'Rourke, Brian Turner, and Matthea Harvey.

Graced with McHugh's fascinating introduction, the anthology includes the ever-popular notes and comments section in which the contributors write about their work. Series editor David Lehman's engaging foreword limns the necessity of poetry. The Best American Poetry 2007 is an exciting addition to a series committed to covering the American poetry scene and delivering great poems to a broad audience.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface 1
• Foreword by David Lehman
• Preface 2
• Introduction by Heather McHugh
• The Art of Breathing
• Crimble of Staines
• Scumble
• The Opening
• Still Life with Half Turned Woman and Questions
• The Method
• Vowels
• A Voice from the City
• Flesh of John Brown’s Flesh Dec 2 1859
• Let Me Count the Ways
• Duties of an English Foreign Secretary
• Marriage
• Common Flicker
• The News Today
• Valentine for You
• Continuous Bullets over Flattened Earth
• A Super Clean Country
• Dead Critics Society
• Tea Lay
• Language Police Report
• Where He Found Himself
• See Jack
• Etudes
• Lemon Tree
• Yinglish Strophes IX
• Daily
• Archaic Fragment
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• The Master
• Best Am Po
• Initiation
• From “The Future of Terror Terror of the Future” Series
• Bush’s War
• Critique of Pure Reason
• Do Unto Others
• Auguries
• Comma of God
• Hide and Seek 1933
• Ode to the Personals
• What Bee Did
• A Good List
• From Angle of Yaw
• When I was a dinosaur
• By Accident
• The 10 Stages of Beatrice
• Ode to the Plantar Fascia
• On Leonardo’s Drawings
• Etymology
• Voltaire at Cirey 1736
• Peep Show
• From Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved
• Dear Pearce & Pearce Inc
• A Tech’s Ode to the Genome Computer
• Swooping Actuarial Fauna
• Ecstatic Cling
• Nursemaid’s Elbow
• Louie Louie
• Stupid Meditation on Peace
• The Rev Larry Love Is Dead
• “If I Tell You You’re Beautiful Will You Report Me ” A West Point Haiku Series
• F
• The Death of the Shah
• Country Western Singer
• Drawing Jesus
• Money
• What Every Soldier Should Know
• The Family
• Coulrophobia
• Flu Song in Spanish
• Big
• The Home of the Brave
• From “Opposites” and “More Opposites”
• At Dusk the Catbird
• An Experiment
• Remiss Rebut
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems were First Published
• Acknowledgments