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A review by sapphisms
The Best American Poetry 2016 by David Lehman, Edward Hirsch
2.0
I received this book through NetGalley and Scribner in exchange for an honest review.
The collection of poetry ends at 53%, if you have a NetGalley copy and are worried about how long it'll take you to read it. Like, really, I was wondering how much longer this could be drawn out (because it was just poem after poem of purple prose and circular references- I was just about Over It) when it suddenly ended and I was... surprised? I guess? I mean, I was hoping I'd find more poems I liked, but (even for me, a poetry fanatic)... yeah, severely lacking.
Some of my favorite lines:
* "What could be lonelier, more full of mute ringing than what she's writing. That, and the wine."
* "My cousin cries about a guy, and I say, 'Good, no one likes him anyway.' No, I don't. I say, 'Find someone who'll treat it like an experience.' And if you do and he doesn't, forget about the clove. He'll ask, 'Was I supposed to swallow that?' Answer, 'That's what she said.'"
* "My cousin rolls her eyes, says I don't understand. The time spent convincing the heartbroken you've been heartbroken."
* "I may have been a nontraditional student but I was a traditional person, she said, the way a professor can say intimate things sometimes, as though your face and soul are aglow in one of those magnified (X 10) makeup mirrors."
* "He closed the door and showed me the scars under his shirt where he had been stabbed. He said I had to assume that everyone had such a wound, whether I could see it or not."
* "I spent so much time alone, when I actually turned lonely it was vertigo."
* "I was on the road for so long by myself, I took to reading motel Bibles just for company. Lying on the chintz bedspread before going to sleep, still feeling the motion of the car inside my body, I thought some wrongness in myself had left me that alone."
The collection of poetry ends at 53%, if you have a NetGalley copy and are worried about how long it'll take you to read it. Like, really, I was wondering how much longer this could be drawn out (because it was just poem after poem of purple prose and circular references- I was just about Over It) when it suddenly ended and I was... surprised? I guess? I mean, I was hoping I'd find more poems I liked, but (even for me, a poetry fanatic)... yeah, severely lacking.
Some of my favorite lines:
* "What could be lonelier, more full of mute ringing than what she's writing. That, and the wine."
* "My cousin cries about a guy, and I say, 'Good, no one likes him anyway.' No, I don't. I say, 'Find someone who'll treat it like an experience.' And if you do and he doesn't, forget about the clove. He'll ask, 'Was I supposed to swallow that?' Answer, 'That's what she said.'"
* "My cousin rolls her eyes, says I don't understand. The time spent convincing the heartbroken you've been heartbroken."
* "I may have been a nontraditional student but I was a traditional person, she said, the way a professor can say intimate things sometimes, as though your face and soul are aglow in one of those magnified (X 10) makeup mirrors."
* "He closed the door and showed me the scars under his shirt where he had been stabbed. He said I had to assume that everyone had such a wound, whether I could see it or not."
* "I spent so much time alone, when I actually turned lonely it was vertigo."
* "I was on the road for so long by myself, I took to reading motel Bibles just for company. Lying on the chintz bedspread before going to sleep, still feeling the motion of the car inside my body, I thought some wrongness in myself had left me that alone."