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.

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.

Whether celebrating clones or revising Led Zeppelin, Equi melds verse with aphorism, wisdom with wicked playfulness."-Entertainment Weekly Equi's poems are under the breath asides from your cleverest friend-witty, thoughtful, and wry. SLIGHT A slight implies if not an insult (real or imagined) at least something unpleasant -- a slight cold, a slight headache. No one ever says: "You make me slightly happy." Although this, in fact, is often the case. Widely published and anthologized, Elaine Equi's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Nation, and numerous volumes of The Best American Poetry.

Equi's poems insist that despite the fact that most of our everyday reality has been rendered accountable and computable, there is still a region of experience that escapes our GPS-mapped consciousness-an intangible realm where poetry is still possible.