Over the course of the first semester, Charlie Christensen and I studied the 2008 edition of Best American Poetry. For each of the seventy-five poems we gave “one sentence” evaluations and gave each one a score of 1-7. After reviewing and comparing our evaluations, we noticed that we gave a lot of poems the same score. We then chose our top…
“Unmistakable quality will soon be upon us. Don’t wait for anything else.” Posted outside of Heights Pizza, Darien, Connecticut.
Joshua Beckman’s “Untitled” was first published in Let the People Die, a series which approximates a sonnet cycle, and I found it in my edition of Best American Poetry 2008. He wrote this poem while traveling on the Staten Island Ferry. The poem does have a title: it is literally called “Untitled.” I’m not sure whether Beckman intended this to convey…
David Young’s “The Dead From Iraq” is a sentimental sonnet published in the 2007 edition of American Poetry Magazine. Young, born in 1936 in Davenport, Iowa, has received honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and others. He has also been the recipient of the Pushcart Prize…
ashberyland 