The Best American Poetry 1996

Book Overview

From Simon & Schuster, in its ninth year, The Best American Poetry 1996 is universally acclaimed as the best anthology in the field.

The compilation includes a diverse abundance of poems published in 1995 in more than 40 publications ranging from The New Yorker to The Paris Review to Bamboo Ridge.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068481451X
• ISBN13: 9780684814513
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The best of this series

I read all of the Best of ... Poetry until about 2000 when I found the quality had really deteriorated. The series was uneven at best, but the 1996 edition was full of wonderful poetry. I might not find Adrienne Rich's politics or poetry particularly agreeable but her critical sense is impeccable.

Wonderful in every way

Well, it is no surprise that one of the bravest and most transgressive voices ever to use a pen is not only a poet of tremendous resonance, but even an anthologizer of genius! Adrienne Rich has put together the best collection of poetry I have ever come across. It is also not surprising that clueless neoconservatives like Harold Bloom have denigrated her brilliant efforts. If I wanted to read dull-as-can-be poetry, I would read one of those appallingly numerous anthologies that feature a preponderance of white male writers. Here, I get something so much better. As a feminist and white woman who knows that the strongest fight against racism and sexism is feminist discourse, I am proud, yes proud, to own this book and to have given my daughter a copy as well.

wonderful ! fantastic! superb!

Adrienne Rich shows once again that she is more broad-minded, courageous, and interested in letting more voices be heard, than any truckload of white male editors who cowardly push their own agenda while the voices of women and minorities are not allowed to be heard. These poems moved me, not just emotionally, but filled me with anger at the injustice of this "American" society. Let's remember, then, that someday white males will need affirmative action! We have great, astonishingly brave women like Adrienne Rich to thank for bringing the unheard and exploited voices of Native women, African-Americans, Latina and Latino poets to the fore of contemporary poetic discourse.

Best of the Bests

Adrienne Rich has put together a book of living poems. She believes that poetry lives in spaces beyond the walls of university literature courses, lives in the moments beyond the vainly personal, lives in the words of people who haven't always been listened to. Always, she believes that poetry lives. There are beautiful poems here, and this is a beautiful book -- but it is a ragged book, and for every perfect note it hits, a wrong one slips in someplace. But that's okay. This is a human book, one that admits all the failures and wrong notes of the everyday. Rich set out to prove that there is good poetry, great poetry, Best American poetry in places where people haven't looked before, and that effort makes this the most valuable book in the Best American Poetry series. It's a book full of 75 surprises, but every reader will be surprised in a different way. Of course, the title is problematic. The title is always problematic, and most of the editors of the series have said in their introductions that these poems aren't necessarily the absolute best of the year, but are the poems which struck the editor as the most interesting. That has given a nice variety to the series, but Rich notes that the variety has been limited because the past editors, for the most part, share aesthetic criteria and cultural biases which have confined the possible range(s) of the series. American poetry is hardly homogenous, and the great strength of American poetry is that it comes from all over the place from all sorts of different voices. Harold Bloom recently edited a Best of the Best American Poetry volume and didn't include ANY of the poems Rich selected, because he thought she edited the volume to conform to her political agenda (as if Bloom didn't edit from a political agenda), and he says that the poetry is bad, is embarrassing. He and I read different books. The poetry in this anthology certainly varies in quality, and probably no-one other than Rich will like all of the poems. That's the nature of an anthology, and that (though Bloom can not fathom such a concept) is the nature of poetry. But there are wonders here, and to pass them up because you fear voices that don't sound like your own is to miss the chorus of America, the chorus of poetry. I've read most of the Best American Poetry volumes, and I own three of them. Rich's anthology is the one I return to most frequently, for nourishment and awakening, for music and noise, for life.