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The Best American Poetry 2012

Edited this year by acclaimed poet and writer Mark Doty, the foremost annual anthology of contemporary American poetry returns.

Over the last twenty-five years, the Best American Poetry series has become a mainstay in the poetry world and beyond. An eagerly awaited yearly event, it is an essential guide to contemporary American verse and the poets who define it.
The poems appearing in the 2012 edition of The Best American Poetry have been chosen by National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty with his customary care, intelligence, and passion for the art.
Stanley Kunitz said, “With his clarity of vision and great heart, Doty stands as an emblematic and shining presence.” The vitality, imagination, and compassion that have illuminated Doty’s own work are reflected in his selections for this year’s anthology. In it are poems of high moral earnestness and poems in a comic register; poems in venerable forms and poems that test the boundaries of innovative composition; poems by eminences and by virtual unknowns.
And as always, the anthology opens with David Lehman’s incisive look at the current state of American poetry.