Review
Robert Pinsky Each year, a vivid snapshot of what a distinguished poet finds exciting, fresh and memorable: and over the years, as good a comprehensive overview of contemporary poetry as there can be.

Review
Robert Pinsky Each year, a vivid snapshot of what a distinguished poet finds exciting, fresh and memorable: and over the years, as good a comprehensive overview of contemporary poetry as there can be.

Book Description
The Best American Poetry 2004 celebrates the vitality and richness of poetry in the United States and Canada today. Guest editor Lyn Hejinian, acclaimed for her own innovative writing, has chosen seventy-five important new poems and contributed a provocative introductory essay. Through her selections, Hejinian has created an essential nexus -- a meeting place for readers to encounter an extraordinary range of poets. With illuminating comments from the writers, and series editor David Lehman's insightful foreword evaluating the current state of the art, The Best American Poetry 2004 is an indispensable addition to a series that has established itself as the first word on what's new and noteworthy in the poetry of our times.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Best American Poetry 2004 celebrates the vitality and richness of poetry in the United States and Canada today. Guest editor Lyn Hejinian, acclaimed for her own innovative writing, has chosen seventy-five important new poems and contributed a provocative introductory essay. Through her selections, Hejinian has created an essential nexus -- a meeting place for readers to encounter an extraordinary range of poets. With illuminating comments from the writers, and series editor David Lehman's insightful foreword evaluating the current state of the art, The Best American Poetry 2004 is an indispensable addition to a series that has established itself as the first word on what's new and noteworthy in the poetry of our times.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Asha Bandele, a Brooklyn-based poet, has taken for her first novel a subject extremely daunting and fraught with emotion: The police shooting of an unarmed jogger, seemingly inspired in part by the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. But rather than making her novel into an examination of political and racial issues or police brutality, Bandele turns it into a eulogy for motherhood lost, a plea for tenderness and the kind of storytelling that resurrects lost family history. — Susan Straight

Publishers Weekly

Solemn and occasionally maudlin, this first novel by the author of the acclaimed memoir The Prisoner's Wife tells a tragic, too-familiar story: a promising young African-American is mistakenly shot by the police in Brooklyn, N.Y. Nineteen-year-old Aya has been getting her life together after a brush with the law and is working hard to earn a college degree. Only the coolness of her beautiful, distant single mother, Miriam, prevents her from being truly happy. When Aya is gravely wounded, Miriam is forced to face her own past and examine her emotionally arid life. Shifting focus rather clumsily, Bandele chronicles Miriam's strict upbringing and forbidden romance with sweet Bird, an ambitious janitor. Miriam loses Bird just before Aya is born, and when Aya is taken from her, too, she resorts to violence. Though she ends up in prison, she is finally able to tentatively connect with others again, meditating on a line by Aya's favorite poet, Sonia Sanchez: "I shall become a collector of me/ And put meat on my soul." Bandele tells her story in simple language, though plaintive asides ("have you ever told me a joke, Mommy, or kissed me just because?"), and italicized laments ("Oh God, didn't I pay with Bird?") give the novel a sentimental veneer. Bandele's low-key take on a grim aspect of the urban black experience stands in refreshing contrast to more sensationalistic renditions, but Miriam's muddled final epiphany will leave readers wishing for something more. Author tour. (Oct. 7) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In the introduction to each edition of this work, we are told that there ought to be an asterisk next to "best," as the editing process is fraught with subjectivity. "American" ought to have an asterisk, too: while all the journals that the poems originally appeared in are published in the United States, the authors come from all over the world. Experimental poet Hejinian has made some fine choices, selecting 75 poems whose authors include well-known poets like Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, and Jane Hirshfield. About half are not only intelligible but downright funny in their plainspokenness or verbose and lyrical yet still easily absorbed. The rest are challenging poems, as the logical connections between thoughts have been elided. These explosions of language-of insight, emotion, a piece of theory or a run of syntax-must be linked by the reader, which is no small feat. Though this entry may frighten some readers into thinking that they just don't "get" it, the series is a staple introduction to poets publishing in this country. Recommended for all libraries.-Joel Whitney, Fordham Univ., New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews