The Best American Poetry 2000
In her introduction toThe Best American Poetry 2000, Rita Dove  offers the key to honest appreciation: read the work for itself, not for its  creator's name and rank on the great chain of poetic being. With luck it will  take the top of your head off, though some poems may only elicit a tingle the  first time around. Put those away and come back another time, in another mood.  "A poem must sing," she writes, "even if the song elicits horror." And the 75  she ultimately chose--by such poetic senior citizens as Lucille Clifton, Thom  Gunn, W.S. Merwin, and the as yet unacknowledged--both sing and explode. Her  harvest is as varied and abundant as the garden (and gardener!) Stanley Plumley  celebrates in "Kunitz Tending Roses":Still, there he is, on any given day,talking to ramblers, floribundas, Victorianperpetuals, as if for beauty and to make usglad or otherwise for envy and to make uswish for more--if only to mystify and move us.Dove does find certain trends, ranging from "the interpolation of personal  chronicles with the larger sweep of events" to "elegies for the passing of  heroes, of good times, of innocence." Certainly, more than one therapist pops up  here--in, for instance, Pamela Sutton's mesmerizing "There Is a Lake of Ice on  the Moon" and in Denise Duhamel's intricate "Incest Taboo" (which is a lot more  subtle than its title would give out). This dislocating double sestina's 13  stanzas juggle a fear of birds, a brother's death, alcoholism, familial  expectations, and so much more. Set free by the form's constraints--the same  end-words must recur in each stanza--this poet uses such phrases as "parrot,"  swoop," "wrong, "hover," hum," and "mother" to great effect, ironies and  tragedies accreting. As Duhamel writes in the contributors' notes: "I felt as  though I were doing a strenuous combination of math, crossword puzzles, and  particle physics."Some poems are definitely augmented by their creators' explanations--and their  prose is often as eloquent as their verse. Others require none. Yet what  threatens to steal the poetic show occurs after these comments. The series  wizard, David Lehman, asked past and present guest editors to cite their top 15  20th-century American poems, in alphabetical order. It's impossible not to  gravitate to this section and silently argue with some selections, approve  others wholeheartedly, discover a few for the first time, and remonstrate over  certain absences. How marvelous, if unsurprising, to see so many poets voting  for Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop (who scores particularly high), and two whom  John Hollander wittily terms "the transatlantic problematics," Auden and Eliot.  If only Lehman had asked each editor to expound on his or her choices. In this  list context, Louise Glück's refusal to "prefer merely fifteen" proves as  inspiring as others' elections. Still, it's amusing to watch such poets as Mark  Strand, A.R. Ammons, and Lehman himself look for loopholes and stuff the ballot  box with also-rans.--Kerry Fried