American Poetry

The critic writing a book of poetry faces peculiar challenges. Can she silence her internal censor enough to produce breakthrough work? Can she both savor and sever her allegiances as the need dictates?

During the last few weeks, as his new book Kindertotenwald was released, Franz and I exchanged a series of emails about the book, the results of which follow.

We admittedly aren't dealing with Thanksgiving here, or even Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, but National Bad Poetry Day is an excuse for us to celebrate the rich history of appallingly bad verse.

Here, for all of you fellow summer sufferers, are four very cold poems that might help you imagine some relief from the heat (and distract you from the fact that it isn't even August).

Williams' red wheelbarrow poem, in fact, can be read as a direct challenge to Eliot, who had a far different view of the direction that poetry should take in the early 20th Century.

What is found there, in the realm of poetry, is what is so often passed over in daily life: the miraculous, the unexpected, the undreamt of. Poems are necessary because they honor the unknown, both in us and in the world.

Here's another great selection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for Spring of 2011.

"Active prayer": It's what I would term Claudia Rankine's response to a poem by Tony Hoagland that angered and offended many readers with a racist worldview and language.

We introduce three brilliant emerging poets, all with poetry books out in early 2011. They give us an intimate look at what these books mean for thei...

The question of influence is a tricky one in the literary realm, but surely, if there are undeniable progenitors of today's collective poetry output, these are the ones.

There's much to be excited about, and these selections give a fair indication of the presses putting out the most important poetry of the day and the degree of vitality of various poetic styles.

"Is American poetry at a dead-end? Have American poets betrayed the great legacy of modernism? Why or why not?

This seems to be a particularly angst-ridden moment for the followers of American poetry. Is it savagely alive, or is it a moribund corpse, having long been administered last rites?

Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity?

What I tell my students is this: Don't read any living American writers. If you're going to read any American writers at all, only read dead ones. That way you can be sure you're not wasting your time.

For years, the Best American Poetry series has been on a downward slope (using slope in the most generous sense of the word). For its 2009 edition, it seems to have reached a final resting point.