"My Life" / Matthew Zapruder. Introduction / Paisley Rekdal -- "Saving the Children" / Julia Alvarez -- "Customer Loyalty Program" / Brandon Amico -- from "The Galleons" / Rick Barot -- "Invention of I" / Kaveh Bassiri -- "A Man Drops a Coat on the Sidewalk and Almost Falls into the Arms of Another" / Reginald Dwayne Betts -- "Nothing Beats a Fair" / Ryan Black -- "Bells" / Bruce Bond -- "Orange" / William Brewer -- "Tender" / Lucie Brock-Broido -- "Obit [Privacy-died]" / Victoria Chang -- "The Waking Life" / Heather Christle -- "Becoming a Forest" / Ama Codjoe -- "In Line to Vote on Our Future Climate" / Meg Day -- "All Through the War" / Timothy Donnelly -- "In Which the Devil Asks Me for My Name" / Hazem Fahmy -- "The Shore" / Vievee Francis -- "Little Death" / Rachel Galvin -- "To X (Written on This Device You Made)" / Julian Gewirtz -- "Birches Are the Gods' Favorite Tree" / Regan Good -- "Sex" / Christine Gosnay -- "It Cannot Be" / Jorie Graham -- "On Patmos, Kneeling in the Panagia" / Samuel Green -- "Big Gay Ass Poem" / BC Griffith -- "Good Mother" / Rachel Eliza Griffiths -- "The Conversion of Paul" / Jennifer Grotz -- "During the Middle Ages" / Camille Guthrie -- "Putting the Pieces Together" / Janice N. Harrington -- "Sunday at the Mall" / Tony Hoagland -- "Fifteen" / Kimberly Johnson -- "The Garden of Earthly Delights" / Troy Jollimore -- "In a Time of Peace" / Ilya Kaminsky -- "Sho" / Douglas Kearney -- "I Never Figured How to Get Free" / Donika Kelly -- "After," / Christopher Kempf -- "Bear" / Steven Kleinman -- "The Gift" / Jennifer L. Knox -- "The Jungle" / Yusef Komunyakaa -- "After a Transcript of the Final Voicemails of 9/11 Victims" / Nick Lantz -- "On Faith" / Shara Lessley -- "When I Feel a Whoop Comin' On" / Steven Leyva -- "Locomotion" / Cate Lycurgus -- "Qassida to the Statue of Sappho in Mytilini" / Khaled Mattawa -- "The Punishment of One Is the Love Song of Another" / Jennifer Militello -- "Night of the Living" / Susan Leslie Moore -- "A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn" / John Murillo -- "Chasm" / Hieu Minh Nguyen -- "Hyacinth Aria" / Sharon Olds -- "Letter to the Person Who, During the Q&A Session After the Reading, Asked for Career Advice" / Matthew Olzmann -- "Climate Is Something Different" / Paul Otremba -- "The Seeds" / Cecily Parks -- "Something to Believe In" / Carl Phillips -- "At Night" / Stanley Plumly -- "Fox" / Jana Prikryl -- "Archaeology" / Kevin Prufer -- "A Partial History" / Ariana Reines -- "The Poorly Built House" / Max Ritvo -- "The Keeper Will Enter the Cage" / Clare Rossini -- "American Cockroach" / Robyn Schiff -- "Shainadas" / Brandon Som -- "Dysphonia" / Jon William Stout -- "Sprang" / Arthur Sze -- "The Prayer" / James Tate -- "Sitting Isohydric Meditation" / Brian Teare -- "I Am a Father Now" / Craig Morgan Teicher -- "She talk like this 'cause me Mum born elsewhere, say" / Lynne Thompson -- "The Stag" / Matthew Thorburn -- "Isfahan, 2010" / Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad -- "Recessional" / Corey Van Landingham -- "Samson, 1674" / Rosanna Warren -- "Machinery" / Robert Wrigley -- "Reading Not Reading" / Ryo Yamaguchi -- "The President's Telegram" / John Yau -- "Opioid, Alcohol, Despair" / Emily Yong -- "Study of Two Figures (Pasiphaë/Sado)" / Monica Youn -- "My Life" / Matthew Zapruder.
Summary:
"For this year's volume, guest editor Paisley Rekdal has selected seventy-five thought-provoking, surprising, unsettling, exhilarating poems."-- Page 4 of cover. The 2020 edition of contemporary American poetry returns, proving that this is "a 'best' anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune). Since 1988, The Best American Poetry anthology series has been "one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world" (Academy of American Poets). Each volume in the series presents some of the year's most remarkable poems and poets. Now, the 2020 edition is guest edited by Utah's Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal, called "a poet of observation and history...[who] revels in detail but writes vast, moral poems that help us live in a world of contraries" by the Los Angeles Times. In The Best American Poetry 2020, she has selected a fascinating array of work that speaks eloquently to the "contraries" of our present moment in time.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.