Save the Date: The Best American Poetry 2012 Launch Reading. Thursday, September 20, 2012, 7:00 PM. The New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY. FREE

For a sneak peek and to pre-order, click on the image and scroll down:

Join Best American Poetry Series Editor David Lehman and Guest Editor Mark Doty as they introduce this year's volume of the acclaimed series.  The following contributors will be on hand to read selections from the book: * Heather Christle * Eduardo C. Corral. * Elaine Equi  * Kathleen Graber  *Amy Glynn Greacen  * Richard Howard * Marie Howe *Lawrence Joseph  * Noelle Kocot * Joy Katz * Kerrin McCadden* Honor Moore * Michael Morse * Carol Muske-Dukes * Angelo Nikolopoulos  * Mary Jo Salter * Lynne Sharon Schwartz * Brenda Shaughnessy * Tracy K. Smith  * Mark Strand * Susan Wheeler  * David Yezzi. *

The reading will be followed by a book signing.  Books will be available for sale.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly has to say about the Best American Poetry 2012 :

Now in its 25th year, the Best American Poetry anthologies have become something of a yearbook for American versifiers. The 2012 volume runs the gamut of styles and positions, from the experimentally mixed registers of Rae Armantrout (“Information describing the fading laser pulse// is stored// is encoded// in the spine states/ of atoms”) to the unrelenting intensity of Frank Bidart (“the burning// fountain is the imagination// within us that ingests and by its/ devouring generates// what is most antithetical to itself”) to an extended meditation on art and family by Paisley Rekdal: “Here is the killer with his handsome face./ Here is Manson, Bundy, Hitler,/ the Terror’s row of heads still spiked on stakes.” Doty, this year’s guest editor, is a populist at heart, who believes poetry is available and useful to all who are willing to seek it out, and so he has chosen poems that take the national pulse in the midst of a tensed political moment (Joy Katz looks to the “Department of Trance/ Department of Dream of Levitation/ Department of White Fathom” for answers) and also look mysteriously inward at a timeless human core as only poetry can: “I keep my distance like the tines/ Of a fork from one another,// Dressing, undressing the fabulous wounds,” writes Noelle Kocot. As usual, there is something for everyone; this is a particularly good volume in this series. 

This event is sponsored by Scribner, the New School Writing Program, and the Poetry Society of America. For more information go here. 

-- sdh

Comments

[Leah Umansky]

What a great collection of poets ! I can't wait. I am marking my calendar!

[Bob Tonucci]

Here's a lovingly satirical piece on the BAP canon:

http://scarriet.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/nooch-reflects-on-his-one-year-anniversary/

[Bill Knott]

time ago when I taught at Emerson College I required the students in my poetry workshops to buy the BAP each September . . . this new one looks equal in value to the earlier volumes . . . the only thing wrong with this annual anthol, as I'm sure many others have pointed out, is that it never includes any of the masterful poems published each year by David Lehman—