Best American Poetry 2016 edited by David Lehman and Edward Hirsch is the 29th annual edition of American poetry. In 1994, Lehman succeeded Donald Hall as the general editor of the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry series, a position he held for twelve years. In 1997, he teamed with Star Black in creating and directing the famed KGB Bar Monday night poetry series in New York City’s East Village. He has taught in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City since the program’s inception in 1996 and has served as poetry coordinator since 2003. He has edited The Best American Poetry Series since 1988. Hirsch is an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published nine books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, which brings together thirty-five years of work, and Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son that The New Yorker calls “a masterpiece of sorrow.” He has also published five prose books about poetry.

There are two events I look forward to every year -- The Iowa Poetry Prize winners and Lehman's Best American Poetry. As an anthology, it is wide-ranging in subject and style making it a book of discovery and also a book that gives the reader boundaries for his or her taste. This is not a collection where the reader will enjoy every poem, but it is a collection that has something for everyone. In Lehman's introduction, he tells of how poetry is a reflection of the times and the times are not good. There is terrorism, environmental destruction, and a constant stream of doom being reported. There is also a diversity in this collection that reflects a change in America. There are poems from Asian and Indian perspectives adding to the traditional melting pot.

Two poems, in particular, jumped up and rattled my brain. “Humanity 101” by Lynn Emanuel deep in satire and real world reflections of Humanity and Remedial Humanity as college courses. Is that how far we have come as people, needing to learn what it is to be humans? Of course, even in the instruction it is filled with the same warped sense of perceived reality that people believed putting a magnet on their car was supporting the troops, but when physically and mentally broken troops returned home needing help they were quickly forgotten. That poem struck deep. In the same sense "The Lady Responds" by Linda Gergerson on the surface seems to show how lightly we treat animals, especially in emotional and physical cruelty. A little closer look at the dedication "after Sir Thomas Wyatt" and the opening line "Whoso list to hunt..." It is a response to Thomas Wyatt's poem about Anne Boleyn where the deer (Boleyn) he wants cannot be had because it's on Caesar's land (king's wife) so he can no longer hunt. Gergerson's reply is concerning the dogs that hunt, cannot behave, and those that are live bait for bears. Extremely well done on two levels.

Also in this year's edition is a high percentage of prose poetry and free verse, much more than I remember in previous editions. Most are very good but still many may question if it is really poetry or a vivid short story. There is no doubt that prose can be poetic but is it poetry? That is for the reader to decide. There are plenty of more conventional poems in the collection for the traditionalists. Best American Poetry 2016 is a good indicator of the direction of American poetry. It reflects the changes in society both good and bad and how America is seen from the inside. Although Lehman warns of the apocalyptic feelings of the times there is hope and lightness still to be found in American poetry. ( )

Curated collection with author biographies.Excellent way to read great poetry from a diverse group of poets and learn about the poets. ( )

My knowledge of poetry is woefully lacking and I picked this anthology to go knees deep in the topic. I found a lot of poets whose work I love (such as Allison Davis, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Erin Hoover, Hai-Dang Phan) and others (won't name names here) whose work I found to be average or poor quality. What turned me off was the deluge of white (I looked them up), old (per their bios) or dead (also in their bios) men who seemed to overflow between the few women or people of color. The editor remarks in the opening notes there were a lot of poets new or new to him but I find it hard to believe he had no clue about how many of these old or dead white guys ESTABLISHED (and this is crucial) poets were in the field when he put this together. This lack of inclusion of emerging or genre-defying work is lazy and erasure of others who don't fit the old, dead, or white guy labels. (The argument being made for the dead poets, many decades passed, is the poem was published in 2015 so it counts. Which if you died in 2015 is fine but if you died in 1995 and it's now edited in a posthumous work? No.)

Overall, the anthology introduced me to a lot of forms and styles of poetry as well as introducing me to some poets whose work I plan on following so it's not a terrible loss. I would give this anthology 3.5 stars on the homogenization of the works selected and lack of inclusion but I upped it to four due to education gleaned and poets I'm now introduced to. ( )

I am in the process of making friends with a poet. So I decided to read a book of poetry, and figured a Best Of meant that I wouldn't have to suffer through a bunch of drivel. Of course, now that I've written the first two sentences of this review, I'm thinking I should have planned and made it in iambic pentameter or something, which would mean looking up exactly what iambic pentameter is because I think what I think iambic pentametic is (da da da da da da da; da da da da da da da da) may just be a rhythm that children's books are often written in.

So I don't read much poetry. I know that I like reading poems that rhyme, but then (I thought quite hard on this) I realized that saying I like reading poems that rhyme really means I like reading When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne, because very few poems rhymed in Best American Poetry 2016 and, the ones that did, I didn't enjoy as much as the ones that didn't. I read a few poems from the anthology each day, letting them shine on me like equatorial sunshine. That's what I think good poetry should do, make you feel like one is standing in a southern Italian sun, by the beach but not on the beach, with that white light we don't get here (too far north). Clarity. To be of pure white light is how I described my daughter; good poetry should be like that.

For the most part, Best American Poetry 2016 was like that. I felt cleansed.

Best American Poetry 2016 edited by Edward Hirsch went on sale September 6, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )