Review: Best American Poetry 2016

Best American Poetry 2016 by David Lehman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Best American Poetry 2016 is a collection of poems that speak to a wide variety of topics and is a diverse selection in terms of flow, length and style.

Some of the poems that stick out in my mind as being truly powerful include “One Had Lived in a Room and Loved Nothing”, “Meet Me at the Lighthouse” and “Afterword.” Beyond that, the poems were a bit more static and predicable for me as a reader. For being a collection of the best, it certainly included some work that felt like rehashing of the same old poetic themes. This collection leaves me wondering what the editor left out.

However, I will commend the collection for including a few rhyming poems—in contemporary poetry, many people have moved away from rhyme schemes and cast them into a fringe or antiquated element of writing and that's not where that work should be.

*Received a copy of this book from NetGalley

View all my reviews