The Best American Poetry 2013

Edited this year by beloved and inventive poet Denise Duhamel, the foremost annual anthology of contemporary American poetry returns.

Over the last twenty-five years, the Best American Poetry series has become a mainstay in the poetry world and beyond. An eagerly awaited yearly event, it is an essential guide to contemporary American verse and the poets who define it.

Denise Duhamel is an ardent and curious poet who has slyly tackled every conceivable style and form, every subject matter and perspective, and has solidly earned her community’s respect. Her wit and enthusiasm informs the 2013 edition of The Best American Poetry. The works collected here are, as Duhamel’s own work is, alive and passionate and full of imagination, reflecting the vibrant state of our country’s contemporary poetry scene. Featuring a star-studded line-up, The Best American Poetry 2013 includes such eminences as John Ashbery, Louise Gluck, James Tate, and Richard Wilbur, as well as the fast-rising hot poets Sherman Alexie, Nin Andrews, Anna Maria Hong, Timothy Donnelly, Mary Ruefle, and Major Jackson. And as always, the anthology opens with David Lehman’s incisive look at the current state of American poetry.

Denise Duhamel is professor of English at Florida International University. She is the author of many poetry collections, including Two and Two and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems. Duhamel has also coedited, with Maureen Seaton and David Trinidad, Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry. The recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she has been anthologized widely, appearing in six volumes of The Best American Poetry.

David Lehman, who founded The Best American Poetry series in 1988, is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry and the author of seven books of poetry, including When a Woman Loves a Man. He teaches in the graduate writing program at the New School and lives in New York City and in Ithaca, New York.