Throughout the course of history within the United states, great poetry has created both inspiration, and connections to the era it aims to depict. This holds true for the Best American Poetry series. As times have progressed, so have poems and their messages. As the new millennium started, new forms of poetry have become popular.…

Sarah Manguso’s, “The Rider,” is a brief poem originally featured in American Letters & Commentary and more recently printed in the 2001 edition of The Best American Poetry. This poem reflects the author’s opinions on how the world will end, and forces the reader to question religion and science. The first two lines instantly grabbed my…

James Richardson’s “Vectors: Forty-five Aphorisms and Ten-second Essays” was first published in Ploughshares in the Spring of 2000. Richardson grew up in the nearby Garden City, and attended/now teaches creative writing at Princeton. Of course I did not know this at the time I chose the poem, but anything written by a professor at the most…