The Best of the Best American Poetry

1988-1997

David Lehman, Harold Bloom

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9781439106068
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Every year since 1988 a major poet has selected seventy-five poems for publication in The Best American Poetry. The series has quickly grown in both sales and prestige, as poetry itself has seen a remarkable resurgence in popularity and vitality, fueled by established poets at the peak of their powers and a new generation of daring voices. As we approach the millennium, now is the opportune moment to take stock of american poetry and choose the work that will stand the test of time. Harold Bloom, a commanding presence on the American literary state, has read all 750 poems in the series and has picked the "best of the best." He precedes his selections with a compelling and highly provocative essay on the state of American letters, in which he fiercely champions the endangered realm of the aesthetic over the politically correct. Diverse in style, method, and metaphor, the seventy-five poems Bloom has chosen go a long way toward defining a contemporary canon of American poetry. This exciting volume reflects not only the taste of the current editor, but the predilections of the all-star list of poets who have contributed their time and intellect to make this series what is today: a "valuable, invaluable, supervaluable" (Beloit Poetry Journal) record of an ever-changing, always exciting art.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Dance Mania
• Anxiety’s Prosody
• Garbage
• From Strip
• Baked Alaska
• Myrtle
• The Problem of Anxiety
• It Is Marvellous …
• The Fire Fetched Down
• Inevitably, She Declined
• The Life of Towns
• My Cousin Muriel
• True Solar Holiday
• litany
• The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act
• Terminal Laughs
• The Printer’s Error
• Powers of Congress
• Salutations to Fernando Pessoa
• Celestial Music
• Vespers
• Manifest Destiny
• What the Instant Contains
• The Piano Player Explains Himself
• Prophecy
• The Porcelain Couple
• St. Luke Painting the Virgin
• Prospects
• Man on a Fire Escape
• Kinneret
• An Old-Fashioned Song
• The See-Saw
• Like Most Revelations
• Nostalgia of the Lakefronts
• Invitation to a Ghost
• The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery
• Three Songs at the End of Summer
• When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone
• Sonogram
• One Train May Hide Another
• Facing It
• Psyche’s Dream
• Scouting
• Histoire
• An Essay on Friendship
• A Room at the Heart of Things
• The “Ring” Cycle
• Family Week at Oracle Ranch
• The Stranger
• Havana Birth
• Protracted Episode
• The Warmth of Hot Chocolate
• At the Lakehouse
• Have You Ever Faked an Orgasm?
• Movie
• A Mathematics of Breathing
• Outsider Art
• The Present Perfect
• The Seasons
• Country Fair
• The Something
• Ripples on the Surface
• Reading in Place
• From Dark Harbor
• Morning, Noon and Night
• Sleeping with Boa
• Omeros
• The Cormorant
• Diversion
• What Memory Reveals
• Lying
• A Wall in the Woods: Cummington
• Disjecta Membra
• Madrid
• The Cradle Logic of Autumn
• Contributors’ Notes And Comments
• Excerpts From The Introductions With Headnotes By David Lehman
• Acknowledgments
• Cumulative Series Index
• Appendix1