The Best American Poetry series is made up of annual poetry collections. Each collection has seventy-five poems.
Background
The series, started by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, changes its guest editor every year. Lehman, who still oversees the series as general editor, writes a foreword each year about the current state of poetry. Each year, the guest editor also writes an introduction for the book. The titles of the books in the series always follow the same pattern, with only the year changing. For example, one book is titled The Best American Poetry 1988.
According to the Academy of American Poets website, Best American Poetry is still one of the most popular and best-selling poetry books published each year. The series continues to offer an overview of the wide range of American poetry.
A collection of the first ten books in the series was published as The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997, guest-edited by literary critic Harold Bloom. Bloom chose what he considered the seventy-five best poems from the previous ten books. In 2013, another collection was published: The Best of the Best American Poetry: 25th Anniversary Edition, guest-edited by Robert Pinsky. Pinsky selected 100 poems from the series’ history.
A book containing all of Lehman’s forewords was published as The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988–2014. This book provides a look at the development of American poetry during that time.
Rules and process
In his 1988 foreword to the first edition of the series, Lehman explained the following rules:
Lehman also wrote that he had set certain tasks for himself as series editor:
John Ashbery chose a poem written by the series editor to be included in the first volume of The Best American Poetry. In his introduction to the 1989 volume, Donald Hall noted: "The series editor chose not to be included." The series editor's own poems have not been included in later volumes.
In Lehman's foreword to the 1992 book, he stated that translations are not eligible.
Critical reception of the series
According to the Academy of American Poets website, "[t]he Best American Poetry series has become one of the important parts of the poetry publication world." The Academy website described the introductions to the collection by guest editors and Lehman's "state-of-poetry" forewords as "very important." Together, the anthologies "seem to capture the current attitudes in American poetry."
However, the Academy article also noted that the series and its editors are "often criticized for their selections and assessments (common complaints include not including experimental poets, not enough diversity, and favoring traditional poets)."
In a 2025 review, Elisa Gabbert, a poetry columnist for The New York Times, wrote that "about half the poems are ones I like, similar to a good journal." She also wrote that she once saw the poems as "examples of how to be a poet" but later viewed them as "examples of how to live life."