Book Review: The Best American Poetry 2021

 

The Best American Poetry 2021

by David Lehman

Pub Date 01 Dec 2021 

 Scribner 

 Poetry 

I am reviewing a copy of The Best American Poetry 2021 through Scribner and NetGalley:

The Best American Poetry collection has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets) since 1988. Every volume presents a choice of the year’s most memorable poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work. The guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2021 is Tracy K. Smith, the former United States Poet Laureate, whose own poems are, Toi Derricotte’s words, “beautiful and serene” in their surfaces with an underlying “sense of an unknown vastness.” 

Smith has selected a distinguished array of works both vast and beautiful by such important voices as Henri Cole, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Nobel laureate Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young for The Best American Poetry 2021.

I give The Best American Poetry 2021 five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!