My Reading List:

  • "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin
  • "The Greatest Generation" by Tom Brokaw
  • "In Spite of the Gods" by Edward Luce

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Best American Poetry 2005

Part of the Best American Poetry series (published since 1988), this is a collection of nice, strange, and bizzarre poems by contemporary American poets.

It features a total of 75 poems, many of which I found hard to appreciate. Of course that does not mean they are bad poems, just that they did not touch me in any way.

One of the poems that I really liked was A.R. Ammon's "In View of the Fact," a touching poem about aging and loss. "Seesaws" by Samuel Hazo is another poem that struck a chord with me. A short poem pointing out life's yin and yang nature, this one keeps you thinking well after you have finished reading it.

I must mention a couple of bizzarre and witty poems that stood out before I close, so here goes. "A Big Ball of Foil in a Small New York Apartment" by Matthew Yeager and "Urban Myth" by Jamey Dunham are interesting reads.

There are other poems that I liked, "Ants" by Vicki Hudspith and "Some Words Inside of Words (for children and others)" by Richard Wilbur for example, but I don't want to ramble on.

Overall this book is definitely worth a few hours of your time over the course of a week or two. I recommend that you sip it like wine enjoying a poem or two now and a few more later.

Me, I'm going to go look for the other books in this series at the library.
Cheerio!

VITAL STATS:
Title: The Best American Poetry 2005
Author: Various
Guest Editor: Paul Muldoon
Series Editor: David Lehman
Foreword: David Lehman
# Pages: 207
Published by: Scribner Poetry (New York)
Year: 2005
L.C. Control #: 2005049982
ISBN #: 0-7432-5738