The Best American Poetry

The Best American Poetry series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.Each year, this series presents essential American verse and the poets. The best American poetry has appeared in this venerable collection for over twenty-five years."Best American Poetry remains one of the most popular and best-selling poetry books published each year."

 History 
The series, begun by David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, each year contributes a foreword focusing on the state of contemporary poetry. The book titles in the series always follow the format of the first, changing only the year.

A compendium for the first decade of the series has also been published, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997. It has seventy-five best poems from the previous ten anthologies. In 2013,It published "The Best of the Best American Poetry: 25th Anniversary Edition (2013)"  which have 100 poems from the series' history.

 Selection Process 
In 1988,the rules for the selection of the poems were laid down by Lehman. 

 Lehman would select a guest editor each year. Guest editor would make the final selection of poems
 Each year's anthology would have poems from the previous year 
 There would be seventy-five poems in each annual anthology maximum three poems by an individual poet
 Foreign poets residing in the United States, "especially in cases where the poet has come to seem a vital presence in a particular American community", would be eligible to appear, and so John Ash, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott all made it into the 1988 edition.

 References 

Category:Poetry
Category:1988 establishments in the United States