The 2020 edition of contemporary American poetry returns, guest edited by Paisley Rekdal, the award-winning poet and author of Nightingale, proving that this is "a 'best' anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune). Since 1988, The Best American Poetry anthology series has been "one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world" (Academy of American Poets). Each volume in the series presents some of the year's most remarkable poems and poets. Now, the 2020 edition is guest edited by Utah's Poet Laureate Paisely Rekdal, called "a poet of observation and history...[who] revels in detail but writes vast, moral poems that help us live in a world of contraries" by the Los Angeles Times. In The Best American Poetry 2020, she has selected a fascinating array of work that speaks eloquently to the "contraries" of our present moment in time.

Matthew Zapruder picks the poems for the 2022 edition of The Best American Poetry, "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 selection of the year's most brilliant, striking, and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work. For The Best American Poetry 2022 guest editor Matthew Zapruder, whose own poems are "for everyone, everywhere...democratic in [their] insights and feelings" (NPR), has selected the seventy-five new poems that represent American poetry today at its most dynamic. Chosen from print and online magazines, from the popular to the little-known, the selection is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series. The series and guest editors contribute valuable introductory essays that illuminate the current state of American poetry.

In celebration of his one-hundredth birthday, a charming, irresistibly readable, and handsomely packaged look back at the life and times of the greatest entertainer in American history, Frank Sinatra.Sinatra's Century is an irresistible collection of one-hundred short reflections on the man, his music, and his larger-than-life story, by a lifetime fan who also happens to be one of the poetry world's most prominent voices. David Lehman uses each of these short pieces to look back on a single facet of the entertainer's story--from his childhood in Hoboken, to his emergence as "The Voice" in the 1940s, to the wild professional (and romantic) fluctuations that followed. Lehman offers new insights and revisits familiar stories--Sinatra's dramatic love affairs with some of the most beautiful stars in Hollywood, including Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Ava Gardner; his fall from grace in the late 1940s and resurrection during the "Capitol Years" of the 1950s; his bonds with the rest of the Rat Pack; and his long tenure as the Chairman of the Board, viewed as the eminence grise of popular music inspiring generations of artists, from Bobby Darin to Bono to Bob Dylan.Brimming with Lehman's own lifelong affection for Sinatra, the book includes lists of unforgettable performances; engaging insight on what made Sinatra the model of American machismo--and the epitome of romance; and clear-eyed assessments of the foibles that impacted his life and work. Warm and enlightening, Sinatra's Century is full-throated appreciation of Sinatra for every fan.

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 Gluck, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.

In celebration of his one-hundredth birthday, a charming, irresistibly readable, and handsomely packaged look back at the life and times of the greatest entertainer in American history, Frank Sinatra. Sinatra's Century is an irresistible collection of one-hundred short reflections on the man, his music, and his larger-than-life story, by a lifetime fan who also happens to be one of the poetry world's most prominent voices. David Lehman uses each of these short pieces to look back on a single facet of the entertainer's story-from his childhood in Hoboken, to his emergence as "The Voice" in the 1940s, to the wild professional (and romantic) fluctuations that followed. Lehman offers new insights and revisits familiar stories-Sinatra's dramatic love affairs with some of the most beautiful stars in Hollywood, including Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Ava Gardner; his fall from grace in the late 1940s and resurrection during the "Capitol Years" of the 1950s; his bonds with the rest of the Rat Pack; and his long tenure as the Chairman of the Board, viewed as the eminence grise of popular music inspiring generations of artists, from Bobby Darin to Bono to Bob Dylan. Brimming with Lehman's own lifelong affection for Sinatra, the book includes lists of unforgettable performances; engaging insight on what made Sinatra the model of American machismo-and the epitome of romance; and clear-eyed assessments of the foibles that impacted his life and work. Warm and enlightening, Sinatra's Century is full-throated appreciation of Sinatra for every fan.

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.

A mid an "explosion in the interest of poetry nationwide" (The New York Times), The Best American Poetry 2000 delivers one of the finest volumes yet in this renowned series. Guest editor Rita Dove, a distinguished figure in the poetry world and the second African-American poet ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, brings all of her dynamism and well-honed acumen to bear on this project. Dove used a simple yet exacting method to make her selections: "The final criterion," she writes in her introduction, "was Emily Dickinson's famed description -- if I felt that the top of my head had been taken off, the poem was in." The result is a marvelous collection of consistently high-quality poems diverse in form, tone, style, stance, and subject matter. With comments from the poets themselves illuminating their poems and a foreword by series editor David Lehman, The Best American Poetry 2000 is this year's must-have book for all poetry lovers.

There is a deep tradition of eroticism in American poetry. Thoughtful, provocative, moving, and sometimes mirthful, the poems collected in "The Best American Erotic Poems" celebrate this exuberant sensuality.
These poems range across the varied landscapes of love and sex and desire -- from the intimate parts of the body to the end of an affair, from passion to solitary self-pleasure. With candor and imagination, they capture the delights and torments of sex and sexuality, nudity, love, lust, and the secret life of fantasy.
David Lehman, the distinguished editor of the celebrated "Best American Poetry" series, has culled a witty, titillating, and alluring collection that starts with Francis Scott Key, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Hart Crane, encompasses Frank O'Hara, Anne Sexton, John Updike, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Kevin Young, and Sharon Olds, and concludes with the rising stars of a whole new generation of versifiers, including Sarah Manguso, Ravi Shankar, and Brenda Shaughnessy.
In a section of the book that is sure to prompt discussion and further reading, the living poets write about their favorite works of erotic writing.
This book will delight, surprise, and inspire.

The 2018 edition of the Best American Poetry--"a 'best' anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune)--collects the most significant poems of the year, chosen by Poet Laureate of California Dana Gioia. The guest editor for 2018, Dana Gioia, has an unconventional poetic background. Gioia has published five volumes of poetry, served as the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and currently sits as the Poet Laureate of California, but he is also a graduate of Stanford Business School and was once a Vice President at General Foods. He has studied opera and is a published librettist, in addition to his prolific work in critical essay writing and editing literary anthologies. Having lived several lives, Gioia brings an insightful, varied, eclectic eye to this year's Best American Poetry. With his classic essay "Can Poetry Matter?", originally run in The Atlantic in 1991, Gioia considered whether there is a place for poetry to be a part of modern American mainstream culture. Decades later, the debate continues, but Best American Poetry 2018 stands as evidence that poetry is very much present, relevant, and finding new readers.

This special edition celebrates twenty-five years of the "Best American Poetry "series, which has become an institution. From its inception in 1988, it has been hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced), and obsessively scrutinized. Each volume consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major American poet acting as guest editor--from John Ashbery in 1988 to Mark Doty in 2012, with stops along the way for such poets as Charles Simic, A. R. Ammons, Louise Gluck, Adrienne Rich, Billy Collins, Heather McHugh, and Kevin Young. Out of the 1,875 poems that have appeared in "The Best American Poetry," here are 100 that Robert Pinsky, the distinguished poet and man of letters, has chosen for this milestone edition.

A prose poem is a poem written in prose rather than verse. But what does that really mean? Is it an indefinable hybrid? An anomaly in the history of poetry? Are the very words "prose poem" an oxymoron? This groundbreaking anthology edited by celebrated poet David Lehman, editor of The Best American Poetry series, traces the form in all its dazzling variety from Poe and Emerson to Auden and Ashbery and on, right up to the present. In his brilliant and lucid introduction, Lehman defines the prose poem, summarizes its French heritage, and outlines its history in the United States. Included here are important works from masters of American literature, as well as poems by contemporary mainstays and emerging talents who demonstrate why the form has become an irresistible option for the practicing poet today. Great American Prose Poems is a marvelous collection, a must-have for anyone interested in the current state of the art.

Much more than a word list, the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus is a browsable source of inspiration as well as an authoritative guide to selecting and using vocabulary. This essential guide for writers provides real-life example sentences and a careful selection of the most relevant synonyms, as well as new usage notes, hints for choosing between similar words, a Word Finder section organized by subject, and a comprehensive language guide. The text is also peppered with thought-provoking reflections on favorite (and not-so-favorite) words by noted contemporary writers, including Joshua Ferris, Francine Prose, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and Simon Winchester, many newly commissioned for this edition.
The third edition revises and updates this innovative reference, adding hundreds of new words, senses, and phrases to its more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms. New features in this edition include over 200 literary and humorous quotations highlighting notable usages of words, and a revised graphical word toolkit feature showing common word combinations based on evidence in the Oxford Corpus. There is also a new introduction by noted language commentator Ben Zimmer.

The 1999 edition of The Best American Poetry will exceed the expectations of the many thousands of readers who eagerly await the annual arrival of this "truly memorable anthology" (Chicago Tribune). Guest editor Robert Bly, an award-winning poet and translator -- famous, too, for his leadership role in the men's movement and his bestselling book, Iron John -- has made selections that present American poetry in all its dazzling originality, richness, and variety. The year's poems are striking in their vibrancy; they all display that essential energy that Bly calls "heat," whether the heat of friendship, the heat of form, or the heat that results when a poet "brings the soul up close to the thing" he or she is contemplating. With comments from the poets illuminating their work, The Best American Poetry 1999 reflects the most exciting and memorable poetry being written at the end of the millennium.

The appearance of The Best American Poetry every September is an eagerly awaited rite of fall -- as evidenced by soaring sales and terrific reviews. The popularity of the series is "ample proof that poetry is thriving" (The Orlando Sentinel), and this year's volume will dazzle and delight, instruct and inspire. Under the guiding vision of master poet John Hollander -- one of America's most erudite literary minds -- The Best American Poetry 1998 spotlights the imaginative power and insight of our finest poets at the fin-de-siècle. Diverse in form and method, the poems display an unwavering nobility of expression, maintaining the uncompromising artistic standards essential to The Best American Poetry tradition as it enters its second decade. With a foreword by series editor David Lehman and with comments from the poets illuminating their work, The Best American Poetry 1998 will lead you on an exhilarating and inspiring literary adventure.

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.

In this book, David Lehman, the longtime series editor of the Best American Poetry, offers a masterclass in writing in form and collaborative composition. An inspired compilation of his weekly column on the American Scholar website, Next Line, Please makes the case for poetry open to all. Next Line, Please gathers in one place the popular column's plethora of exercises and prompts that Lehman designed to unlock the imaginations of poets and creative writers. He offers his generous and playful mentorship on forms such as the sonnet, haiku, tanka, sestina, limerick, and the cento and shares strategies for how to build one line from the last. This groundbreaking book shows how pop-up crowds of poets can inspire one another, making art, with what poet and guest editor Angela Ball refers to as "spontaneous feats of language." How can poetry thrive in the digital age? Next Line, Please shows the way. Lehman writes, "There is something magical about poetry, and though we think of the poet as working alone, working in the dark, it is all the better when a community of like-minded individuals emerges, sharing their joy in the written word."

David Lehman, a poet of wit, ingenuity, and formidable skill, draws upon his heritage as a grandson of Holocaust victims and offers a stirring autobiographical collection of poems that is his most ambitious work to date. It covers an expansive range of subjects -- from love, sex, and romance to repentance, humility, the meaning of democracy, Existentialism, modern European history, military intelligence, and the rituals associated with faith and prayer. The title poem, "Yeshiva Boys," is a work in twelve parts that blends the elements of espionage fiction, memory, history, and moral philosophy. It reflects David's experience as a student in an orthodox Yeshiva, and it, along with many other poems in the book, explores what it means to be a Jew in America, what is gained and lost in assimilating to secular culture, how to understand the peculiar destiny of the Jewish people, and how to reconcile the existence of God with the knowledge of evil. Beautiful, provocative, and accessible, this is David Lehman's most inspired collection.

The latest installment of the yearly anthology of contemporary American poetry that has achieved brand-name status in the literary world.

"The Best American Poetry 2004" celebrates the vitality and richness of poetry in the United States and Canada today. Guest editor Lyn Hejinian, acclaimed for her own innovative writing, has chosen seventy-five important new poems and contributed a provocative introductory essay. Through her selections, Hejinian has created an essential nexus -- a meeting place for readers to encounter an extraordinary range of poets. With illuminating comments from the writers, and series editor David Lehman's insightful foreword evaluating the current state of the art, "The Best American Poetry 2004" is an indispensable addition to a series that has established itself as the first word on what's new and noteworthy in the poetry of our times.

Since its inception in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has achieved brand-name status in the literary world as the preeminent showcase of each year's most important contributions to American poetry. This year's exceptional volume, edited by Robert Creeley, a figure revered across teh wide spectrum of American poetry, features a diverse mix of established masters, rising stars and the leading lights of a younger generation. The pleasure of the poems selected here, Creeley explains in his introduction, is "that they caught my fancy, some almost outrageously, some by their quiet, nearly diffident manner, some by unexpected turns of thought or insight, others by a confident authority and intent." With comments from the poets elucidating their work, a thought-provoking introduction from Creeley, and Lehman's always popular foreword assessing the current state of poetry, The Best American Poetry 2002 will prove as irresistible to new readers as it is indispensable for poetry fans everywhere.

The eagerly awaited follow-up to his critically acclaimed collection The Daily Mirror, The Evening Sun gathers together 150 of David Lehman's favorite "daily poems" from 1999 and 2000 into a brilliant chronicle of a poet's heart and mind as the last century ends and a new one begins.