The Best American Poetry 2011 edited by Kevin Young and David Lehman

Title: The Best American Poetry 2011 
Author: Many 
Editor: Guest Editor: Kevin Young, Series Editor: David Lehman 
Type: Poetry collection 
Genre: Poetry 
Series: Yearly publication 
Pages: 211 
Copyright: 2011 
Publisher: Scribner 
Rating: 2.5 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads.

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

Feelings:
I think there were about 8 poems in this edition that I really enjoyed. For me the forward and introduction may have been the best parts of the book. David Lehman talks about what makes a poem great. He admits that this will vary by individual.

Poetry is "what gets lost in translation" (Frost); it "strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty" (Shelley); it "is the universal language which the heart holds with nature itself" (Hazlitt). (page ix)

Kevin Young in the introduction talks about the economy of poetry and while it reflects the world it hasn't had a similar recession to the global economy. He argues that in tough times we need poetry.

The poems I encountered take on the world, including the workaday one, with real imagination, giving the lie to the idea that poetry is unconcerned with earthly matters. To me that's exactly where poetry lives--not only in the ether, though it may have its place there, too, but in the dirt and deep mud. (page xxi)

The introduction does a really good job tying this collection together and giving them more of a meaning as a whole. That being said, I didn't not enjoy most of the poems collected in here and wondered if this really was the best poetry America has to offer. Reading the biographical information the authors provided reads as though they are all professors, maybe 4 have different professions and another 4 didn't list their occupation. This makes me wonder if there is some club of poets that you can only enter as a professor of English or Creative Writing and thus join the authors that are getting published in this anthology. Now that I've had my dirt about this let me mention the poems I did think were worth reading.

Valediction by Sherman Alexi about depression showed how hard it is for those outside to understand and help the depressed.

To My Lover, Concerning the Yird-Swine by Julianna Baggott a request of a lover about love.

In November by Alan Feldman talks about family.

Morning on the Island by Carolyn Forche is observations of life on an island. This is a simple yet deep poem, I know some will disagree with me.

Word by Jude Nutter a poem about growing old and loosing language.

Pantoum for the Imperceptible by Bianca Stone I enjoy the form of the pantoum even though it adds a since of confusion to poems.

The Poem of the Spanish Poet by Mark Strand This is an interesting poem in that it has 2 parts one imagining to be the Spanish poet and the second that the imagining wrote.

Elegy by Natasha Trethewey an elegy for a father.

Out of about 75 poems I found that these 8 were the ones I might want to come back to later. I can't guaranty that I will think of them later, though. I think if you want to get an idea of where American poetry is this series might be a good place to start I just object to it being called the "Best American Poetry" because I hope there is something better out there than this.