The Best American Poetry 2015

The Best American Poetry 2015

The Best American Poetry 2015

The Best American Poetry 2015

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Overview

The premier anthology of contemporary American poetry continues with an exceptional volume edited by award-winning novelist and poet Sherman Alexie, now with a new essay by Alexie on reactions to the 2015 publication.

Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry has become a mainstay for the direction and spirit of American poetry. Each volume in the series presents the year’s most extraordinary new poems and writers. Guest editor Sherman Alexie’s picks for The Best American Poetry 2015 highlight the depth and breadth of the American experience. Culled from electronic and print journals, the poems showcase some of our leading luminaries—Amy Gerstler, Terrance Hayes, Ron Padgett, Jane Hirshfield—and introduce a number of outstanding younger poets taking their place in the limelight.

A leading figure since his breakout poetry collection The Business of Fancydancing in 1992, Sherman Alexie won the National Book Award for his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. He describes himself as “lucky enough to be a full-time writer” and has written short stories, novels, screenplays, and essays—but he is at his core a poet. As always, series editor David Lehman’s foreword assessing the state of the art kicks off the book, followed by an introductory essay in which Alexie discusses his selections. The Best American Poetry 2015 is a guide to who’s who and what’s happening in American poetry today.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781476708201
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: 09/08/2015
Series: Best American Poetry Series
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

About The Author
David Lehman, the series editor of The Best American Poetry, edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His books of poetry include The Morning Line, When a Woman Loves a Man, and The Daily Mirror. The most recent of his many nonfiction books is The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Sherman Alexie, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and performer. His twenty-four books include What I've Stolen, What I've Earned, poetry, Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel. Alexie has been an urban Indian since 1994 and lives in Seattle with his family.

Read an Excerpt

The Best American Poetry 2015


The new news is I love you my nudist

the new news is I love you my buddhist

my naked body and budding pleasure

in the weather of your presence

Not whether your presence but how

Oh love a new nodule of neurosis

a posy of new roses proposing

a new era for us nobis pacem

Oh my bodhisattva of new roses

you’ve saved me from my no-love neurosis

You’ve saved my old body from the fatwa

Let’s lie down in a bed of roses

a pocketful that rings round the rosy

If this is the end of the world my love

let’s fall down in bed and die

Let’s give a new nod to nothing

Let’s give a rosebud to nothing at all

How I love the new roses of nothing

Oh my bodhisattva of nothing

boding I hope no news but this

For our bodies and souls I hope nothing

but the weather of us in our peace

from Poem-a-Day

Table of Contents

Foreword David Lehman ix

Introduction Sherman Alexie xxi

"Bodhisattva" Sarah Arvio 1

"Cedars of Lebanon" Derrick Austin 3

"A Retrograde" Desiree Bailey 5

"WFM: Allergic to Pine-Sol, Am I the Only One" Melissa Barrett 7

"Swallowed" Mark Bibbins 9

"A Scatology" Jessamyn Birrer 11

"The Joins" Chana Bloch 13

"House Is an Enigma" Emma Bolden 15

"Prayer at 3 a.m." Dexter L. Booth 16

"Makeshift" Catherine Bowman 17

"in the hall of the ruby-throated warbler" Rachael Briggs 18

"Homeland" Jericho Brown 19

"Doctors Lie, May Hide Mistakes" Rafael Campo 20

"A fourteen-line poem on sex" Julie Carr 21

"For I will do/undo what was done/undone to me" Chen Chen 22

"Careful, I Just Won a Prize at the Fair" Susanna Childress 24

"The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve" Yi-Fen Chou 25

"Slow-Wave Sleep with a Fairy Tale" Erica Dawson 27

"In a Black Tank Top" Danielle DeTiberus 28

"It Was the Animals" Natalie Diaz 29

"Fornicating" Denise Duhamel 32

"Vernacular Owl" Thomas Sayers Ellis 36

"In Memory of My Parents Who Are Not Dead Yet" Emily Kendal Frey 43

"On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses" James Galvin 45

"The Garden in August" Madelyn Garner 47

"Rhinencephalon" Amy Gerstler 49

"A Sharply Worded Silence" Louise Glück 50

"Looney Tunes" R. S. Gwynn 53

"Thumbs" Meredith Hasemann 55

"Antebellum House Party" Terrance Hayes 57

"My Husband" Rebecca Hazelton 59

"A Common Cold" Jane Hirshfield 61

"Crisis on Infinite Earths, Issues 1-12" Bethany Schultz Hurst 63

"Body & Kentucky Bourbon" Saeed Jones 68

"Exhibits from the Dark Museum" Joan Naviyuk Kane 70

"For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike" Laura Kasischke 71

"In the End, They Were Born on TV" Douglas Kearney 74

"Eating Walnuts" Jennifer Keith 78

"Is Spot in Heaven?" David Kirby 79

"Ode to the Common Housefly" Andrew Kozma 81

"The Pickpocket Song" Hailey Leithauser 82

"Waching the Sea Go" Dana Levin 83

"See a Furious Waterfall Without Water" Patricia Lockwood 85

"Party Games" Dora Malech 87

"Anxieties" Donna Masini 89

"If My Late Grandmother Were Gertrude Stein" Airea D. Matthews 91

"There Are Birds Here" Jamaal May 93

"Dove" Rajiv Mohabir 99

"Upon Hearing the News You Buried Our Dog" Aimee Nezhukumatathil 100

"Plutonium" D. Nurkese 102

"54 Prince" Tanya Olson 104

"Survivor Guilt" Ron Padgett 106

"Candying Mint" Alan Michael Parker 108

"Relevant Details" Catherine Pierce 110

"The Main Event" Donald Platt 112

"from Citizen Claudia Rankine 117

"Poem Begun on a Train" Raphael Rubinstein 120

"Endnotes on Ciudad Juárez" Natalie Scenters-Zapico 125

"legend" Evie Shockley 126

"So Early in the Morning" Charles Simic 128

"Similitude at Versailles" Sandra Simonds 129

"The Macarena" Ed Skoog 131

"Ajar" A. E. Stallings 133

"Memo to the Former Child Prodigy" Susan Terris 134

"Delicatessen" Michael Tyrell 135

"How You Might Approach a Foal:" Wendy Videlock 140

"The Chickasaw Trees" Sidney Wade 142

"Trades I Would Make" Cody Walker 144

"Goodness in Mississippi" LaWanda Walters 148

"City of Eternal Spring" Afaa Michael Weaver 150

"Dear Black Barbie" Candace G. Wiley 151

"Subject to Change" Terence Winch 152

"Thaw" Jane Wong 153

"March of the Hanged Men" Monica Youn 155

Contributors' Notes and Comments 157

Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published 203

Acknowledgments 207

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