BY PUMA PERL | Last November, while on a West Coast poetry reading tour, I stayed for a few days at my friend Beverly’s San Francisco home. Beverly loves books more than anyone I know. Floor to ceiling shelves line every inch of available wall space, and there are additional cartons in the garage and in storage. Serendipitously, the guest room doubles as the Poetry Room, everything alphabetized and divided into categories and sub-categories. It was there that I discovered the Best American Poetry series in its entirety. I had come across a volume or two and was already an admirer of the work of the Senior Editor, David Lehman, but never before had I had access to all twenty-five volumes.
Jet lagged and bleary eyed, I stayed up as long as possible, devouring volume after volume. The next afternoon I was still at it, vaguely annoyed when I had to stop and attend my own reading. As a poet, my knee-jerk reaction to anything labeled “best” is “How do you know?” or “By whose standards?” David Lehman’s 2011 introduction provided some insight into the editorial methods by exploring the concept of poetic greatness and the standards we use, and the ways in which an editor must suspend his own “natural resistance” to new forms and new ideas.
‘Best American’ anthology has brilliance, innovation, surprises
This year’s Guest Editor, National Book Award-winning poet Terrance Hayes, admits in his introduction to finding himself obsessing over the concept of “best” and concluding that there are all kinds of “bests,” representing a “unity of contradictions.” What I will attest to, in all of these volumes, including the current one, is that there is brilliance, there is innovation, there are surprises, and there are no poems that I would unequivocally state are unworthy of inclusion.
The series began in 1988, and employs a different poet as Guest Editor each year, who is responsible for the final selection. For the most part, the poems were published during the previous year. The first Guest Editor, John Ashbery, included a poem of his own, and appears in the current volume. David Lehman’s early practice of writing forewords has evolved into a “state of the art ” statement. In the current volume, he considers the ways in which the digital age has changed our language and thinking. Poetry may continue to be celebrated “if you can write in units of 140 keystrokes,” as a character from “Mad Men” states in the opening paragraph. Lehman points out two things that you can count on. First, that “people will keep writing as they adjust from one medium to another,” and second, that articles will appear at regular intervals declaring that poetry is dead.
ANTHOLOGY | THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2014 Guest Editor, Terrance Hayes Series Editor, David Lehman 240 pages Scribner Hardcover: $35.00 Paperback: $18.99 E-book: $11.99 Visit thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com
The selected poems vary in form and are diverse in the choice of poets. They are arranged alphabetically, yet, magically, create links and form natural arrangements, probably because of the vision of the editor. Many anthologists spend countless hours creating order among their selections; I’ve found it to be one of the biggest challenges in my own solo collections. In this case the poems line up like children in size place, some of them rowdy, some quiet, some refusing to stand quietly in place.
A poem by Ray Gonzalez, “One El Paso, Two El Paso” ends with the words five centuries praying in the beautiful dust as a young woman’s body is dragged from the river. The following entry, by Kathleen Graber, is titled “The River Twice,” which takes its title from a pre-Socratic philosopher, and concludes, A hymn with the chorus Every moment you shall be judged is followed by in which the choir shouts Praise! Stand up and be forgiven. To me, some of the gifts of the volume are these coincidences, cultural diversity connecting on artistic soil.
Another aspect that distinguishes this series is a lengthy section (42 pages) of contributors’ notes and comments. Rather than the usual array of accomplishments and/or cute one-liners, an opportunity is provided for the poets to write about the published pieces. Olena Kalytiak Davis, whose entry, “It is to Have or Nothing” was one of my favorites, admits, “I don’t really like this poem.” She goes on to explain that the most interesting thing about it is all of the other poems that happened around it — “that they are part of the dirt!” Jon Sands, a thirty-one-year-old Brooklyn resident, created a new form in his poem, “Decoded,” in which he tried to “produce an effect similar to what you get when you examine a photograph beside its negative.” He adds that “without the work and personhood of Eboni Hogan” this poem could not have been written.” I’ve known Jon Sands for several years and his innovation and generosity of spirit are what you would expect from him. The kid is a mensch of the highest order and his work stands up equally on page and stage. He has built a community both with other poets and in the human service arena, providing well received workshops in harm reduction settings. I decided to have a conversation with him about his inclusion in the series and his view of the state of the art.
I was curious about how the selection process played out for him. “I received a fairly nondescript email about possible inclusion in ‘an anthology,’ and I’m really glad I wrote back,” he explained. He later learned that the Guest Editor reads as much published work as possible for a year, and curates from there. It is telling that Sands’ piece was originally appeared in “Rattle,” which publishes in several forms, including online, and whose mission is solely “to promote the practice of poetry.” I noted that despite the complexity of his piece, a sly humor also emerged. “I believe that ninety-nine percent of the discoveries in my life that I have been most proud of would not have been possible without a sense of play. My hope is that the sense of play, dark humor, and the undeniable pain (and growth) that can accompany not looking away are all-present in the poem.”
Sands had just returned from a residency at the Blue Mountain Center in Upstate New York when we spoke, and I asked him about the experience. “The residency was transformative and productive,” he responded. “The true benefit for me has come in its wake. But, like most profoundly transformative spaces, you’re not meant to stay there. You’re meant to take it with you on your journey into the difficult and beautiful world.”
The description of the world as “difficult and beautiful” is what I have come to expect from him. Sands’ first solo collection, “The New Clean,” was published in 2011 and I attended the book release party. Some moments stay with you. I was greatly moved by the sense of community and the love present among the participants and the audience. I specifically recall Sands’ friend, Jeanann Verlee, who is also a favorite poet of mine, describing their friendship, hours spent on the floor of Barnes & Noble, in love with poems, words and each others’ spirits, and I remembered when that was me. On the floor in the Eighth Street Bookstore, or the back of the Fillmore, or going through records in Free Being, in love with the moment of discovery. For many people, it’s only new once, but artists get to continually transform. The torch has not only passed, it returns to light the fires under those who thought hope was lost.
And that is why I like this series so much. It brings hope. As Lehman points out, Whitman wrote an essay in 1888 forecasting the demise of poetry in fifty years “owing to the special tendency to science and to its all-devouring force.” Hayes ends his introductory interview with these words: “The poems are here as proof. They are a gift to you whom I was thinking of all along the way. How you might, on an overcast day, criticize my choices. How you might, on a well-lit day, salute what I salute, and be transformed as I have been transformed.”
How, maybe, you might even write a poem.
Learn more about Jon Sands at jonsands.com. His collection, “The New Clean,” is available at bookstores or online, at powells.com/biblio/61-9781935904267-0. His favorite show of the year is coming up Sat., Sept. 13, 7-9 p.m., at The Firehouse Space (246 Frost St., Brooklyn), hosted by Sands and Adam Falkner, with special guests a cappella trio Saheli. Tickets are $12, $8 for students and veterans.
Puma Perl and Friends will appear at Moscow 57 (168 Delancey St.) on Thurs., Sept. 18, 9:00. The next Puma Perl Pandemonium is Fri., Sept. 26, 7-9:30, at the Bowery Electric Map Room (327 Bowery), and includes featured guests Michael Anthony Alago, Annie Sauter and Jim Petrie, Alison Gordy, Johnny Young and a cast of regulars: Puma Perl and Friends, Joff Wilson, Walter Steding, Danny Ray, Angello Olivieri, Joe Sztabnik, Jeff Ward and Rick Eckerle. Free admission to both events.
