Michael Dirda's review appeared in the Washington Post on January 2, 2019 under the headline "How do you define authenticity? A poetry collection explores a modern problem." Here is Dirda's opening:
<< Verbal felicities, haunting or explosive imagery, the architectonic dazzlements of rhyme and meter — all these are dwarfed by American poetry’s reverence for genuineness, for authenticity. “Look in thy heart and write” advised Sir Philip Sidney’s muse, but that injunction has long been our own literature’s credo. Yet in their introductory essays to “The Best American Poetry 2018,” the 30th installment of this always excellent annual anthology, series editor David Lehman and this year’s guest editor, Dana Gioia, present dissimilar views on precisely what authenticity entails. >>
Among the poets Dirda singles out for praise are Julia Alvarez, George Bradley, Susan deSola, Dick Davis, Ernest Hilbert, Anna Maria Hong, Mandy Kahn, Jacqueline Osherow, Michael Robbins, Allyn Rosser, Mary Jo Salter, A. E. Stallings, Agnieszka Tworek, and Christian Wiman.
