The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988-2014

The acclaimed annual, <i>The Best American Poetry</i>, is the most prestigious showcase of new poetry in the United States and Canada. Each year since the series began in 1988, David Lehman has contributed a foreword, and this has evolved into a sort of state-of-the-art address that surveys new developments and explores various matters facing poets and their readers today. This book collects all twenty-nine forewords (including the two written for the retrospective &quot;Best of the Best&quot; volumes for the tenth and twenty-fifth anniversaries.) Beginning with a new introduction by Lehman and a foreword by poet Denise Duhamel (guest editor for <i>The Best American Poetry 2013</i>) , the collection conveys a sense of American poetry in the making, year by year, over the course of a quarter of a century.