State of the Art

The acclaimed annual, <i>The Best American Poetry,</i> is the most prestigious showcase of new poetry in the United States and Canada. Each year since the series began in 1988, David Lehman has contributed a foreword, and this has evolved into a sort of state-of-the-art address that surveys new developments and explores various matters facing poets and their readers today. This book collects all twenty-nine forewords (including the two written for the retrospective Best of the Best volumes for the tenth and twenty-fifth anniversaries.) Beginning with a new introduction by Lehman and a foreword by poet Denise Duhamel (guest editor for <i>The Best American Poetry 2013</i>), the collection conveys a sense of American poetry in the making, year by year, over the course of a quarter of a century.