Bettering American Poetry

We feel that to "better" American poetry is to jam dominant systems of taste to the best of our abilities, and to resignify the very phrase "American poetry" with the languages that it so desperately lacks. We intend to center voices of resistance, subjectivities that emerge from the radical margins, artists whose Americanness transcends nationalism and other borders, perspectives historically denied institutional backing--in short, poets and poetries that are urgent and necessary but do not get along nicely with Power. "Bettering American Poetry is a poetic battle cry for resistance. Comprised of captivating voices that transcend borders and defy the limits of our time, this anthology rattles readers awake with scintillating truth andtough love." -Jamia Wilson, Executive Director of the Feminist Press "Imagine this. A calling of our names, a murmuring of our ghosts, a shouting in our blood. Thank you, dear editors and poets, for burning through to bone, for acknowledging our cuts, for naming our skeletal struggles. Thank you for this edge of safety, for this bit of home." -Ching-In Chen, author of The Heart's Traffic and recombinant (winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Trans Poetry) "Here lives poetry that resembles a sticky dance floor. Poetry that is at once terraformed music and primal shout and wet kiss and sweaty palm. The "American" in Bettering American Poetry is a kind of ghoulish placeholder for whichever more rebellious, more enlivening world comes next. Pay close attention to the future maps and manifestos and mantras these poets have dreamed up. Join them in the club, in the brown/black/feminist/decolonial commons, in which everyone is where they are supposed to be." -Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World, winner of the 2018 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize "A world in which more than one anthology annually presents the poems their editors loved best is better than a world in which readers have to wait many years for the odd tome-like anthology to appear and attempt to define contemporary poetry. These anthologies help readers to understand what's happening in poetry, and they especially help beginning poets to recognize the community they are joining. Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3 includes work by some of the most exciting poets writing today, and-and this is of the utmost importance-it makes poetry's visible community larger." -Shane McCrae, author of The Gilded Auction Block and In the Language of My Captor

We feel that to "better" American poetry is to jam dominant systems of taste to the best of our abilities, and to resignify the very phrase "American poetry" with the languages that it so desperately lacks. We intend to center voices of resistance, subjectivities that emerge from the radical margins, artists whose Americanness transcends nationalism and other borders, perspectives historically denied institutional backing--in short, poets and poetries that are urgent and necessary but do not get along nicely with Power. "Bettering American Poetry is an explosive revelation of the arriving generation of American poets-arriving from every part of the landscape, bringing energies, gifts, and ways of seeing and saying of every kind. Plunge into its pages. See/ hear the news of who we are." --Jane Hirshfield, author of The Beauty "This anthology and its squad of editors better American poetry by gathering a diverse formation of poets who inspire us to read across difference, speak against power, and breathe through struggle." --Craig Santos Perez, author of from unincorporated territory [lukao] "Thank you, editors, thank you, authors for utterly rearranging my cells. This is the only anthology with the word "American" I want to be a part of. A series I will return to, giddy. How desperately I needed to experience how big a poem can be - what a gift you've given us - I'm beaming at you, poets - brutal and honey, whiplash and cry." --TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania and co-editor of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics "Some anthologies are important. Some are important and necessary. Resistance on every level to what is considered normal and acceptable is both important and necessary. It is the only way to breath. This gathering helps us breathe. We need all the help we can get." --John Yau, author The Wild Children of William Bake and Bijoux in the Dark.

We feel that to "better" American poetry is to jam dominant systems of taste to the best of our abilities, and to resignify the very phrase "American poetry" with the languages that it so desperately lacks. We intend to center voices of resistance, subjectivities that emerge from the radical margins, artists whose Americanness transcends nationalism and other borders, perspectives historically denied institutional backing--in short, poets and poetries that are urgent and necessary but do not get along nicely with Power. "Soaring and raw, these poems 'better' American Poetry by battering down racial pieties of our white neoliberal nation. This anthology is an explosive Cri de Coeur of these times." - Cathy Park Hong "Resistance and action have always been key elements of progress, and I'm so encouraged that Bettering American Poetry exists and super humbled to be a part of it. We need this poetry, these voices, this perspective--and the poems are just really freaking good!" - Tommy Pico "Bettering American Poetry is verse of the most urgent kind. In this moment of rising fear and resentment these poets write with a deep regard for all peoples. This is the kind of work that will take us through the next 4 years and the next 100." - Nate Marshall

Overview: Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, and Thomas Travisano continue the standard of excellence set in Volumes I and II of this extraordinary anthology. Volume III provides the most compelling and wide-ranging selection available of American poetry from 1950 to the present. Its contents are just as diverse and multifaceted as America itself and invite readers to explore the world of poetry in the larger historical context of American culture. Nearly three hundred poems allow readers to explore canonical works by such poets as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath, as well as song lyrics from such popular musicians as Bob Dylan and Queen Latifah. Because contemporary American culture transcends the borders of the continental United States, the anthology also includes numerous transnational poets, from Julia de Burgos to Derek Walcott. Whether they are the works of oblique avant-gardists like John Ashbery or direct, populist poets like Allen Ginsberg, all of the selections are accompanied by extensive introductions and footnotes, making the great poetry of the period fully accessible to readers for the first time.

The 2020 edition of contemporary American poetry returns, guest edited by Paisley Rekdal, the award-winning poet and author of Nightingale, proving that this is “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune). Since 1988, The Best American Poetry anthology series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume in the series presents some of the year’s most remarkable poems and poets. Now, the 2020 edition is guest edited by Utah’s Poet Laureate Paisely Rekdal, called “a poet of observation and history...[who] revels in detail but writes vast, moral poems that help us live in a world of contraries” by the Los Angeles Times. In The Best American Poetry 2020, she has selected a fascinating array of work that speaks eloquently to the “contraries” of our present moment in time.

This book features a collection of essays on some of the key poets of post-war America, written by leading scholars in the field. All the essays have been newly commissioned to take account of the diverse movements in American poetry since 1945, and also to reflect, retrospectively, on some of the major talents that have shaped its development. In the aftermath of the Second World War, American poets took stock of their own tumultuous past but faced the future with radically new artistic ideals and commitments. More than ever before, American poetry spoke with its own distinctive accents and declared its own dreams and desires. This is the era of confessionalism, beat poetry, protest poetry, and avant-garde postmodernism. This book explores the work of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Sylvia Plath, as well as contemporary African American poets and new poetic voices emerging in the 21st century. This New Casebook introduces the major American poets of the post-war generation, evaluates their achievements in the light of changing critical opinion, and offers lively, incisive readings of some of the most challenging and enthralling poetry of the modern era.

Within the pages of this anthology, now in its second edition, you’ll find 39 American poets from across the twentieth century. In his introduction, editor and Guggenheim fellow Donald Hall, describes the face of American poetry as "subjective." The American poem “reveals through images not particular pain, but general subjective life . . . The poet uses fantasy and distortion to express feeling.”