Nick Sturm at Defector:
Lehman the poet-journalist was now series editor of a popular anthology, a prestige role that bred more prestige roles: judging the National Book Award for poetry, editing The Oxford Anthology of American Poetry, and a 22-year position teaching creative writing at The New School. By handing over annual guest editorship of The Best American Poetry to prominent poets such as Ashbery, Yusef Komunyakaa, Edward Hirsch, and Louise Glück, Lehman aligned the anthology series with a broad spectrum of influential and prize-winning poets whose “ecumenical” taste—Lehman’s favored descriptor for his guest editors’ disposition—became aligned with his own.
Lehman believes in the power of anthologies. He has good reason to: The Best American Poetry has been published continuously by a Big Five imprint for nearly 40 years. It has made him “arguably the most important tastemaker of contemporary American poetry,” Denise Duhamel wrote in the foreword to The State of the Art. This year’s anthology, framed as a celebration of Lehman’s vision, will be the final volume.
With this powerful emblem of professional literary culture coming to an end, what are we to make of The Best American Poetry? I want to offer two ways to approach this question. One is about taste. The other is about publishing.
More here.
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