Best American Poetry 2016

David Lehman, Edward Hirsch

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501127571
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The premier anthology of contemporary American poetry continues—guest edited this year by award-winning poet Edward Hirsch, a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the president of The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The Best American Poetry series is “a vivid snapshot of what a distinguished poet finds exciting, fresh and memorable” (Robert Pinsky); a guiding light for the mood and shape of modern American poetry. Each year, this series presents essential American verse and the poets who create it. Truly the “best” American poetry has appeared in this venerable collection for over twenty-five years.

A poet of decided brilliance since his 1981 debut collection, For the Sleepwalkers, Edward Hirsch curates a thoughtful selection of poetry for 2016 and an Introduction to be savored. Jumpha Lahiri said of Hirsch, “The trademarks of his poems are…to be intimate but restrained, to be tender without being sentimental, to witness life without flinching, and above all, to isolate and preserve those details of our existence so often overlooked, so easily forgotten, so essential to our souls.” Hirsch’s choices for this collection reflect the soul of poetry in America. As ever, series editor David Lehman opens this year’s edition with an insider’s guide and a thoughtful contemplation of poetry today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Foreword by David Lehman
• Introduction by Edward Hirsch
• Christopher Bakken, “Sentence”
• Catherine Barnett, “O Esperanza!”
• Rick Barot, “Whitman, 1841”
• Jill Bialosky, “Daylight Savings”
• Paula Bohince, “Fruits de Mer”
• Michelle Boisseau, “Ugglig”
• Marianne Boruch, “I Get to Float Invisible”
• David Bottoms, “Hubert Blankenship”
• Joseph Chapman and Laura Eve Engel, “32 Fantasy Football Teams”
• Michael Collier, “Last Morning with Steve Orlen”
• Allison Davis, “The Heart of It All + A Free Beer”
• Olena Kalytiak Davis, “On the Certainty of Bryan”
• Natalie Diaz, “How the Milky Way Was Made”
• Denise Duhamel, “Humanity 101”
• Lynn Emanuel, “My Life”
• Claudia Emerson, “Cyst”
• Martín Espada, “Here I Am”
• Peter Everwine, “The Kiskiminetas River”
• Alexis Rhone Fancher, “When I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:”
• Charles Fort, “One Had Lived in a Room and Loved Nothing”
• Emily Fragos, “The Sadness of Clothes”
• Amy Gerstler, “A Drop of Seawater Under the Microscope”
• Dana Gioia, “Meet Me at the Lighthouse”
• Jorie Graham, “Reading to My Father”
• Juliana Gray, “The Lady Responds”
• Linda Gregerson, “Font”
• Jennifer Grotz, “Self-Portrait on the Street of an Unnamed Foreign City”
• Mark Halliday, “Doctor Scheef”
• Jeffrey Harrison, “Afterword”
• Terrance Hayes, “Barberism”
• Tony Hoagland, “Bible Study”
• Cynthia Hogue, “The Unwritten Volume”
• Garrett Hongo, “I Got Heaven . . .”
• Erin Hoover, “Girls”
• Richard Howard, “85 Off & On”
• T. R. Hummer, “Minutiae”
• Ishion Hutchinson, “Morning Tableau”
• Major Jackson, “Aubade”
• Lawrence Joseph, “Visions of Labor”
• Julie Kane, “As If”
• Suji Kwock Kim, “Return of the Native”
• Loretta Collins Klobah, “Tissue Gallery”
• John Koethe, “The Swimmer”
• Yusef Komunyakaa, “The Fool”
• Keetje Kuipers, “We drive home from the lake, sand in our shoes,”
• Deborah Landau, “Solitaire”
• Li-Young Lee, “Folding a Five-Cornered Star So the Corners Meet”
• Philip Levine, “More Than You Gave”
• Larry Levis, “If He Came & Diminished Me & Mapped My Way”
• Robin Coste Lewis, “On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari”
• Thomas Lux, “Ode While Awaiting Execution”
• Paul Mariani, “Psalm for the Lost”
• Debra Marquart, “Lament”
• Cate Marvin, “High School in Schuzou”
• Morgan Parker, “Everything Will Be Taken Away”
• Hai-Dang Phan, “My Father’s ‘Norton Introduction to Literature,’ Third Edition (1981)”
• Rowan Ricardo Phillips, “The First Last Light in the Sky”
• Stanley Plumly, “Variation on a Line from Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Five Flights Up’”
• James Richardson, “Late Aubade”
• Patrick Rosal, “At the Tribunals”
• David St. John, “Vineyard”
• Brenda Shaughnessy, “But I’m the Only One”
• Anya Silver, “Maid Maleen”
• Taije Silverman, “Grief”
• Tom Sleigh, “Prayer for Recovery”
• A. E. Stallings, “Alice, Bewildered”
• Frank Stanford, “Cotton You Lose in the Field”
• Susan Stewart, “What Piranesi Knew”
• Nomi Stone, “Drones: An Exercise in Awe-Terror”
• Adrienne Su, “Peaches”
• James Tate, “Dome of the Hidden Temple”
• Lee Upton, “The Apology”
• C. K. Williams, “Hog”
• Eleanor Wilner, “To Think of How Cold”
• Al Young, “The Drummer Omar: Poet of Percussion”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• About David Lehman and Edward Hirsch
• Copyright