Robert Hass is a contemporary American poet who in addition to writing poetry, is known for translating and being a critic of Polish poetry and Japanese Haikus. Hass is recognized for his clarity of expression, conciseness, imagery, and the fact that he draws inspiration from everyday life. Contemporary poet Forrest Gander says that Hass’ “work…

Susan Parr is the author of Pacific Shooter, awarded the Lena-Miles Wever Todd prize from Pleiades Press.  Her work is anthologized in The Best American Poetry series and in Alive at the Center: Poetry from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press, 2013). Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, she was educated at Barnard College in New…

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. Dawes is described as a poet, actor, editor, and former Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. Growing up in Jamaica, Dawes attended Jamaica College and the University of the West Indies where he received…

Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, and  emigrated to the U.S in 1966. He founded Exquisite Corpse which is a Journal of Books & Ideas in 1983 and taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins University, University of Baltimore, and Louisiana State University.  He won the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English award. He’s…

Jill Bialosky, 61, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio where she was raised by her mother and three sisters. Bialosky worked hard, as she graduated from Ohio University, then received a Master of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University, and finally got a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She…

The Best American Poetry edition of 2004 is filled with an abundance of astounding poems published that year. After a considerable amount of discussion we decided on three poems in our volume that particularly spoke to us while reading them. These three poems include “20 questions” by Alan Bernheimer, “Chicken” By Kim Addonizio, and “Dog…

We have examined each poem of Best American Poetry 2002 and have found Steve Malmude’s “Perfect Front Door,” Louise Gluck’s “Reunion,” and Ira Sadoff “Self-Portrait with Critic” to have messages that resonate the most with us. We have identified these poems as having accessible and meaningful language which compliments it’s meaning, making it worthy of…

In society today, the importance of poems and the popularity of them are decreasing.  Less people are reading and writing these pieces; but after reading my 2002 volume of Best American Poetry, I came to realize that poems should still be read and interpreted by all.  High School students, especially, can learn from and relate…

In the beginning of our school year, Drew, Sigurd and I were assigned the novel The Best American Poetry 2010 edition.  During the 2010 year, most of us senior students were around the age of 10 years old and there were a couple notable events that had occurred in the would. The BP oil spill…

The goal for us is to choose three poems that represented  our year of 2016. With this goal we found seven poems we liked then we narrowed it down to the three poems we thought represented our year the most.  This year to us was more about storytelling and the three poems we picked really…