ISBN: 9781476708201    Publisher: SCRIBNER Year of publishing: 2015     Format:  Paperback

The premier anthology of contemporary American poetry continues with an exceptional volume edited by award-winning novelist and poet Sherman Alexie. Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry has become a mainstay for the direction and spirit of American poetry. Each volume in the series presents the year's most extraordinary new poems and writers. Guest editor Sherman Alexie's picks for The Best American Poetry 2015 highlight the depth and breadth of the American experience. Culled from electronic and print journals, the poems showcase some of our leading luminaries--Amy Gerstler, Terrance Hayes, Ron Padgett, Jane Hirshfield--and introduce a number of outstanding younger poets taking their place in the limelight. A leading figure since his breakout poetry collection The Business of Fan-cydancing in 1992, Sherman Alexie won the National Book Award for his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. He describes him-self as "lucky enough to be a full-time writer" and has written short stories, novels, screenplays, and essays--but he is at his core a poet. As always, se-ries editor David Lehman's foreword assessing the state of the art kicks off the book, followed by an introductory essay in which Alexie discusses his selections. The Best American Poetry 2015 is a guide to who's who and what's happening in American poetry today.
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David Lehman, series editor of The Best American Poetry, is also the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His books of poetry in-clude New and Selected Poems, When a Woman Loves a Man, and The Daily Mirror. He teaches in the New School graduate writing program and lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York. Sherman Alexie, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and performer. His twenty-four books include What I've Stolen, What I've Earned, poet-ry, Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, and The Absolutely True Dia-ry of a Part-Time Indian, a novel. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Best American Poetry 2015 SARAH ARVIO Bodhisattva The new news is I love you my nudist the new news is I love you my buddhist my naked body and budding pleasure in the weather of your presence Not whether your presence but how Oh love a new nodule of neurosis a posy of new roses proposing a new era for us nobis pacem Oh my bodhisattva of new roses you’ve saved me from my no-love neurosis You’ve saved my old body from the fatwa Let’s lie down in a bed of roses a pocketful that rings round the rosy If this is the end of the world my love let’s fall down in bed and die Let’s give a new nod to nothing Let’s give a rosebud to nothing at all How I love the new roses of nothing Oh my bodhisattva of nothing boding I hope no news but this For our bodies and souls I hope nothing but the weather of us in our peace from Poem-a-Day
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