The Best American Poetry 2014 Read Free

both cento and sonnet. If I ask you to explain this, I am sure you will say, “A good poem is a good poem,” or some such platitude.
    TH: A good poem is a good poem.
    CK: Instead I would like you to address the diversity that seems more than anything to have guided your decisions. A formal poem here, an experimental poem there, a poem by a “person of color” here, a poem by an old white guy there—how is anyone to really understand the essence of “American Poetry” if it amounts to a gumbo and get-along of choices?
    TH: Some might say memory is the soul of imagination; that we seldom can imagine something before we have remembered an experience of it, a sense of it.
    CK: Who says that?
    TH [ignoring the question]: But let’s consider diversity as possibly the soul of imagination. I’m not ashamed to say I wanted a diverse mix. In my introduction I describe my poetic tastes as something like a yard with a fence I cannot see. If I leave my porch and walk over a few hills, cross a few rivers, I suspect I will find my border: the place where I say this is a poem, this is not . But ultimately, I want my yard to be bigger not smaller, and this editing process made that possible. Still, I’m sure you can find styles or schools I left out.
    CK: Some of your choices could be construed as political. I amreminded of Harold Bloom’s pugnacious introduction to The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997 wherein—
    TH: Where while decrying political poetry, Bloom writes one of the most political introductions in the series—
    CK: Is that how you read his introduction?
    TH: I’ll stick with my fenced yard analogy. Bloom’s fence comes right up to his door. Which would be fine if he wasn’t such an anxious neighbor—the sort who not only confiscates the balls inadvertently tossed inside his fence, but also means to outlaw any ball games he doesn’t recognize.
    CK: Bloom’s fervor is admirable. Like me, he is one of the few scholars paying attention to contemporary poetry. What, it must be asked, do you think is the function of the critic in an ever-uncritical culture?
    TH: I don’t mind critics. That’s why you’re here in advance of the critics and reviewers at the door. But do we really need someone to police the boundaries of poetry? I’m not saying that Adrienne Rich’s 1996 volume was, like, the best of the best, but Bloom became narrow and polemical as he accused Rich of being narrow and polemical. It just wasn’t a very generous introduction. If there is no generosity toward the arts, there is no Art.
    CK: Fine. I happen to think Bloom is invaluable to poets. But enough of that. You have a political cento in your introduction. Let’s hear that one before I order another bottle of wine. The Argentinian Malbec?
    TH:
    POLITICAL CENTO
    It takes an American to do really big things. | For just a moment, imagine yourself as an Iraqi living in Baghdad. | dance backward toward town, down the long dirt road | Attack, back off, and then | GO GO GO GO | I believe in life as sure as I believe in death | I know why he is in ache. | How can a piece of knowledge be stupid | It’s all Romeo and Juliet—hate crimes, booty calls, political assassinations. | All thumbs. All bicoastal and discreet and masculine and muscular.| so much to be learned and even more to be researched. | I know some readers need to see their lives reflected on the page | I’ll spend the rest of the week closing an eye to the world | Let that be true.
    CK: Well. I don’t know how “political” that is. But you also selected a poem inspired by the Trayvon Martin story: Jon Sands’s “Decoded.”
    TH: Yes, that’s a terrific poem.
    CK: Is it not too topical?
    TH: It’s ingeniously structured. It shows us just how complicated a political poem—I don’t think I trust that descriptor—can be. Actually, I think Patricia