The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-97

by Harold Bloom (Editor), David Lehman (Series Editor )

One of the country's foremost literary critics chooses the best seventy-five poems from the past ten years of the widely acclaimed Best American Poetry series, with a provocative introduction that comments on the state of poetry today. Simultaneous. 50,000 first printing.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[W.B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this was a fairly insulting move by Lehman. He didn't choose these though, did he? Wasn't it Bloom or someone wholly unimaginative like that? First, you invite distinguished poets to choose the best American poetry in each year, and then you turn around after a decade and say, "Well, here's the real stuff...let me show you the few time these losers actually chose REAL POETRY." And then you have the one editing it choose the most conservative work from those years and hold it up as exemplary. Poets who favored experimental work (like John Ashbery in the inaugural anthology, or Jorie Graham) were pretty much flattened by the big formalist/populist bus driven here by some Ralph Kramden wannabe tastemaker. Yuck! David Lehman is annoying enough in his introductions (esp. the one for Billy Bob Thornton Collins) and here he facilitated one of the most annoying moves the BAP series ever made.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe as interesting for the cantankerous ramblings of Harold Bloom justifying, among other things, why he included NO poems from the first particular year when the original reviewers selected persons of color and other marginalized people because it did not correspond with his "Western Canon" thesis.

[Frederick Gault · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection! Donald Hall's Prophecy is in it, it blew me away:

". . .let oxen and athletes
flash into grease: "

". . . and the earth split open like a corpse's gassy
stomach and the sun turn as black as a widow's skirt "

[Marc Kohlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic edition! Has also given me inspiration for my own poetic works.

[Elaysee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rarely moved me greatly. Bloom's tirade about Objective Poetic Truth definitely made me want to read the installment he spurned!

[Robin Yaklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edited as only Harold Bloom can. Sits on my shelves where I can easily reach for it.

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of these are forgettable, but I read and reread "The Stranger" by W.S. Merwin and am so, so enamored.

[Sherry Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this anthology soured by a rambling and vituperative introduction by the volume editor, Harold Bloom, who refused to include any poems at all from the 1996 edition, calling it a "monumental representation of the enemies of the aesthetic," and then setting off on a ranting defense of the canon.

The 1996 edition, edited by Adrienne Rich, was blatantly political and a lot of the poems, read as I read them, a couple of decades after the fact, seemed highly forgettable to me. Nor am I one of those who dismisses Bloom as a pettifogging old white man, though he was doing a good imitation of one here.

I just thought he was particularly ungracious and unfair and I thought shame on him.

Nor did I find his "Best of the Best" any more memorable than Rich's 1996 volume. Flipping back through to see what poems I'd marked, I find one by Richard Wilbur and one by James Merrill.

The best of the poets in the 96 volume, according to Bloom, had done "better work elsewhere" and I fear the same is true for many of the poets in The Best of the Best.

It's all old news, I know. If this volume caused any kind of stir at the time, I was too busy raising teen-agers to notice it.

What I did enjoy in this volume was the series of excerpts from the introductions written by the editors of the first ten volumes.

[Marci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry is difficult to rate. I was not familiar with any of these poems. Since it is 2013, I don't know which ones have withstood the test of time. The excerpts from previous issues of Best of the Best were insightful about how we view poetry.

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This compilation is the 25th anniversary of the Best Series, newer than cited
on the above description. It is chock full of good poems. Philip Levine, Jane
Hirshfield, Carl Phillips, Rae Armantrout, Stanley Kunitz, Jane Kenyon, and many
more make this volume a delight. I recommend.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I would disagree with many of the editor's selections for this one, it did help me appreciate some of the poems I passed by in the other volumes.

[Amy]

school

[Tom]

I never saw this here book, to this day.