A review by toniclark
The Best American Poetry 2011 by David Lehman, Kevin Young

3.0

There are a few really wonderful poems here and a lot more that are not so wonderful -- and many that I'm sure many people would say, not even good. The catch, of course, is that what I think were the good ones may not be the ones you'd pick. Ain't it the truth? I seem to have a bias against long poems, so wouldn't even try to comment on them. Weirdly, I thought that most of the poems whose authors' last names begin with P were quite good (e.g., Pankey, Pierce, Pollitt, Pratt). Also liked Armantrout, Essbaum, Goldberg, and Wetzsteon. The real standout for me was Trethewey's "Elegy" (for her father).

You can read it here in the New England Review.