The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Harold Bloom, who chose the poems.
Bloom selected poems from every entry in the series through 1997, with the exception of the 1996 volume, edited by Adrienne Rich. Bloom criticized the 1996 issue in his introductory essay, claiming that Rich had selected poems based on the "race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, and political purpose of the would-be poet", rather than on aesthetic merit. Lehman wrote in his own introductory essay that he believed a number of Rich's selections would have met Bloom's criteria, and that he disagreed with Bloom's decision to exclude any poems from Rich's editorship.
Read more about The Best Of The Best American Poetry 1988-1997: Critical Reaction, Poets and Poems Included, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words the, american and/or poetry:
“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“We are now in the Me Decade—seeing the upward roll of ... the third great religious wave in American history.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)