The Best American Poetry 2011: Series Editor David Lehman Paperback – 20 September 2011

As varied and excellent as any volume in this "Best of..." series.

Had to get this for class. Didn't really like the poems, becuase they are not the style of poetry that I enjoy. I find them to be quite plain and outer or surface meaning, whereas I enjoy mysitcal and inner or deep meaning.

I love the diversity and quality of poetry found in this volume. Very well organized too so it is a good way to keep up with most contemporary writing.

I did not order it my wife did

I look forward each year to the 'The Best American Poetry' series - and the 2011 version is a good one.It may well be the product of (mostly) creative writing courses, as some have claimed - but so what if the result is good? I found here plenty to enjoy and to be challenged by. And isn't that the point of an anthology? To be enjoyable? To make some new discoveries and to read old friends too? This volume provides both.I really liked the controlled melancholy of Rosanna Warren's The Latch, the intensely imagined world evoked in David Wagoner's Thoreau and the Lightning, the longing of Gretchen Steele Pratt's To my father on the anniversary of his death, the sense of musical passion in Horn by Robert Pinsky, the marvelous wit demonstrated in Family Math by Alan Michael Parker (and sadness too), the solid reality in Jude Nutter's Word and (again) the music in Jennifer Knox's Kiri Te Kanawa Singing 'O Mio Babbino Caro'. And I especially loved Cornelius Eady's Emmett Till's Glass-Top Casket - chilling and spare.This is enough for me - a lively and varied selection that is a glimpse of the richness of contemporary American Poetry.It is proudly what it is - and I regard this volume (in particular) as a conscientious attempt to be varied and to reflect the depth of cultural contributions made by some of America's most interesting practitioners. And I enjoyed it. Enough already!Simeon Kronenberg