Best American Poetry 2018

David Lehman, Dana Gioia

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501127816
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Allison Adair, “Miscarriage”
• Kaveh Akbar, “Against Dying”
• Julia Alvarez, “American Dreams”
• A. R. Ammons, “Finishing Up”
• David Barber, “Sherpa Song”
• Andrew Bertaina, “A Translator’s Note”
• Frank Bidart, “Mourning What We Thought We Were”
• Bruce Bond, “Anthem”
• George Bradley, “Those Were the Days”
• Joyce Clement, “Birds Punctuate the Days”
• Brendan Constantine, “The Opposites Game”
• Maryann Corbett, “Prayer Concerning the New, More ‘Accurate’ Translation of Certain Prayers”
• Robert Cording, “Toast to My Dead Parents”
• Cynthia Cruz, “Artaud”
• Dick Davis, “A Personal Sonnet”
• Warren Decker, “Today’s Special”
• Susan de Sola, “The Wives of the Poets”
• Dante Di Stefano, “Reading Dostoyevsky at Seventeen”
• Nausheen Eusuf, “Pied Beauty”
• Jonathan Galassi, “Orient Epithalamion”
• Jessica Goodfellow, “Test”
• Sonia Greenfield, “Ghost Ship”
• Joy Harjo, “An American Sunrise”
• Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin”
• Ernest Hilbert, “Mars Ultor”
• R. Nemo Hill, “The View from The Bar”
• Tony Hoagland, “Into the Mystery”
• Anna Maria Hong, “Yonder, a Rental”
• Paul Hoover, “I Am the Size of What I See”
• Marie Howe, “Walking Home”
• Mandy Kahn, “Ives”
• Ilya Kaminsky, “We Lived Happily During the War”
• Stephen Kampa, “The Quiet Boy”
• Donika Kelly, “Love Poem: Chimera”
• Suji Kwock Kim, “Sono”
• Karl Kirchwey, “Palazzo Maldura”
• Nate Klug, “Aconite”
• Robin Coste Lewis, “Using Black to Paint Light”
• David Mason, “First Christmas in the Village”
• Robert Morgan, “Window”
• Aimee Nezhukumatathil, “Invitation”
• Hieu Minh Nguyen, “B.F.F.”
• Alfred Nicol, “Addendum”
• Nkosi Nkululeko, “Skin Deep”
• Sheana Ochoa, “Hands”
• Sharon Olds, “Silver Spoon Ode”
• Jacqueline Osherow, “Tilia cordata”
• Mike Owens, “Sad Math”
• Elise Paschen, “The Week Before She Died”
• Jessica Piazza, “Bells’ Knells”
• Aaron Poochigian, “Happy Birthday, Herod”
• Ruben Quesada, “Angels in the Sun”
• Alexandra Lytton Regalado, “La Mano”
• Paisley Rekdal, “Philomela”
• Michael Robbins, “Walkman”
• J. Allyn Rosser, “Personae Who Got Loose”
• Mary Ruefle, “Genesis”
• Kay Ryan, “Some Transcendent Addiction to the Useless”
• Mary Jo Salter, “We’ll Always Have Parents”
• Jason Schneiderman, “Voxel”
• Nicole Sealey, “A Violence”
• Michael Shewmaker, “Advent”
• Carmen Giménez Smith, “Dispatch from Midlife”
• Tracy K. Smith, “An Old Story”
• Gary Snyder, “Why California Will Never Be Like Tuscany”
• A. E. Stallings, “Pencil”
• Anne Stevenson, “How Poems Arrive”
• Adrienne Su, “Substitutions”
• Natasha Trethewey, “Shooting Wild”
• Agnieszka Tworek, “Grief Runs Untamed”
• G. C. Waldrep, “Dear Office in Which I Must Account for Tears,”
• Wang Ping, “老家—Lao Jia”
• James Matthew Wilson, “On a Palm”
• Ryan Wilson, “Face It”
• Christian Wiman, “Assembly”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editors
• Copyright