December Distraction: Best American Poetry 2009
December 1, 2009
As Jared notes, our “December Distraction” is going to be the 2009 Best American Poetry anthology. On the whole, I’ve found enough gems in every volume of the Best American Poetry series to make it worth the very reasonable cover price (in my system of intellectual currency that means finding 10 good poems– leading to 5 or so new poets). I don’t plan to discuss every poem–I burnt out quickly the last time I tried that– just the ones that a) I find particularly compelling, b) I find particularly questionable, or c) come up as part of the conversation with Jared.
My take on poetry anthologies is a bit different from Jared’s. I not only don’t avoid anthologies, I actively seek them out. A good anthology is, to me, akin to a well-curated mixed-artist museum exhibition– it might ultimately be secondary to a solo show or retrospective, but such an exhibition can be a fine thing in its own right. In part this comes from my belief that most poems are not intentionally crafted as parts of a collection, or at least are not created with sufficient attention to that aspect that they are damaged by being published individually. It’s not just a side-effect of the realities of publishing and the market that most poems we see in books have previously been published individually elsewhere; I doubt most poets feel they are making a significant sacrifice publishing their poems that way first.
As weak as the music may or may not be (I have many guilty pop pleasures I shall keep hidden for now), anthologies like Now That’s What I Call Music are, to my mind, the best way to enjoy pop music. There isn’t really an equivalent of magazine publishing for mainstream music… the industry is still (sadly) album-centric. But the music the artists create is not. Which means artists make a few good songs and then are forced by market demands to create a bunch of filler. The age of the concept album is long over. Pop songs are meant to be enjoyed as singles. They are designed for anthologies, which are actually a truer representation of the current pop music scene than the full albums they come from. Following from that, a collection of singles is– in some ways at least– a better representation of a pop musician than a collection of their entire catalog. I’m not sure most contemporary poetry is any different.
Now, back to the Best American Poetry series.
I have my own reservations about the Best American Poetry collections, as I do other anthologies. Most significantly, the selection process– as I infer it from the introductory essays in various volumes– is broken. Because the selection isn’t blind, too many poets are represented on the strength of their name rather than their poems. The 2009 anthology provides an immediate example: the first poem, an anaphoric piece by Ashbery, isn’t bad, but is it really one of the best poems of the year? By any measure? I find it hard to believe many of these poems would make it past the initial screening, much less into the anthology, if they were read without the authors’ names attached.
And while I don’t have a problem with the use of the word “Best” in the title (if anything, I admire the chutzpah), it’s unfortunate we don’t have more “Best of” anthologies, edited (curated) by a more diverse range of taste. The Best American Poetry series provides an adequate representation of mainstream contemporary poetry, but there are worlds of poetics excluded and that exclusion gives this one well-known series too much weight in the mind of casual readers who may base their entire perception of poetry on this single volume. That’s too much weight for any anthology to bear!
We will see what happens this year. As usual, while initially conceived as– and seeded by– a conversation between Jared and myself, we hope some of you out there will join the conversation. Even if you don’t have the Best American Poetry anthology in hand, I suspect there will be plenty of philosophical conversations about poetry, poetics and aesthetics… and I’ll post a few complete poems here and there as time permits.
Tags:
bap09, bestampo09, poetry
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December 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am
Ooh, I think you countered each of my starting claims well enough to make me reconsider. The concept album /is/ rare (and maybe extinct in pop music), and though I don’t think books of poetry are often as conceptually constructed (if at all), I do enjoy reading a single author’s poems one to another.
It may be that an anthology is the best way to enjoy pop music, but I wonder about the implied comparison between pop music and contemporary poetry. I suppose as far as pop-poetry goes, this collection might be as mainstream as it gets–I’ll reserve judgment on that!
And on reflection I have to admit that even if “best” is a way of simply moving books of poems into more people’s hands, the end justifies the means. For me, as I admit, I do look forward to finding the best new pieces or poets I’ve not heard of before (and looking at this list of names, the field is ripe).
You mentioned the initial Ashbery poem, and though I often enjoy Ashbery I did actually scratch my head and wonder: first, why BAP orders the poems alphabetically? Is this a requirement for editors of BAP? Then, being sometimes amused but not startled by the poem, is this was Ashbery’s best poem of the year?
Not a great way to start an anthology, I thought, but I have committed to take Lehman’s advice in the opening essay and avoid unnecessary negativity, and, indeed, to let silently pass the poems that are unimpressive or boring–at least for this month!
December 1st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I certainly want my comparison of pop music and poetry to be quite limited… if writing a good pop song were easy, everyone would be doing it. I think a musician, like a poet, can only be expected to write a pretty limited number of really good pieces in any given year (or whatever). Sometimes the lesser efforts of an artist are enjoyable, sometimes they are informative– sometimes they are even both!
As best I can remember, every volume of BAP is in alphabetical order by author. I suppose it’s out of a desire to be “fair” or something. I’m guessing the guest editor has no choice in the matter, but it would be interesting to see how each editor would choose to arrange the poems they’ve selected.
I have a hard time accepting– given Ashbery’s (often frustrating) talent– that this was even his own best poem of the year, much less one to be numbered against the best by anyone…
But like you, I am going to try hard to focus on the poems that move me in a positive way, for reasons that are in line with some of the thoughts in Lehman’s foreword (some of which will be the subject of my next post.
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Funny, I’ve been thinking a lot about the poetics of pop songs (well, pop-punk actually) for the past month or so–certainly inspired by the harder look I took at poetic forms (in the car I drive my wife nuts, I think, by tapping out the metrical feet to the lyrics on the steering wheel). I’ve been meaning to write something about the rhyme schemes and rhythms that really grab, impress, or provide great pleasure. Indeed, I have been leaning towards the position that the best poetry of the 20th c can not exclude lyrics. As you suggest, many of us do take the poetry of pop for granted (though every once in a while I see a college course devoted to that idea, but it usually focuses on Bob Dylan, though here at UVU I have a colleague who teaches heavy metal).
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:23 am
Wow, that’s a whole different and interesting direction. I don’t see many lyrics that can stand on their own as poetry… which isn’t knocking good lyrics, but so far most are pretty welded to their musical accompaniment. I’d love to hear more about lyrics you feel should be included amongst the best poetry, not to mention other aspects of poetics and meter and how they relate…
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 am
I’d love to learn more about the heavy metal course, even if I have to quibble with the idea that Slaughter– a quintessential hair/butt rock band of the 80s (that I listened to a lot
– is heavy metal!
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:31 am
I probably am not equipped to claim that certain lyrics should be included amongst the best poetry, but I certainly would enjoy highlighting songs that give me as much pleasure for their lyrics as for their music.
SLAUGHTER!
I wonder if I can talk Steve into doing part of his heavy metal course out in the open…
December 7th, 2009 at 8:34 am
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