The Best American Poetry

The Mad Hatter's Guide to BAP [I] [by Lauren MacArthur]

1988

John Ashbery is a fedora, brown.

Find him on the Upper East side or in the tony areas of Tribeca or the Village. He is sophisticated, straightforward and a tad aloof. Perhaps even slightly arrogant at times; he is the only guest editor to publish himself. He likes the color blue. There is one "r" in Ashbery.

1989

Donald Hall is a church hat, which he tips to red-headed women.

Aside from his obsession with hair, he is the Ward Cleaver of poetry. Plain verse, simple, benign, tender and populated with husbands and wives, Hall is not the least bit acerbic or jaded, but understated and relaxed. Hall is even more pragmatic than Billy Collins. Two poems in his collection are called "Movie."

1990

Jorie Graham is a veil, black.

Could she be clinically depressed? I was truly worried about her when I was reading BAP 1990. Graham is brooding and dark. There is zero levity in her selections. There is a religious thread to pieces within remoteness.

1991

Mark Strand is a mourning hood.

Death, death and more death. Humorless, obsessed with morbidity and mortality, the poems reside in hospitals, on death-beds, and funeral homes. Strangely, Strand is also obsessed with sex and desire. In one poem in particular, sex and death intersect. In another, contemplation over the possibility of Christ getting laid. Still, Strand is the only guest editor with two poems entitled "Desire."

1992

Charles Simic is a night cap.

Sweet, romantic and charming, Simic will tuck you into bed, give you spoonful of honey for your sore throat and play a CD of Frank Sinatra to lull you to sleep. Don’t be fooled by his schoolboy twinkle; if he does spend the night with you, it will be one that you never forget. He loves hats, so he’ll probably be wearing one before or after.

1993

Louise Gluck is a head scarf.

Erotic, sensual and a bit rambly, this headdress is easily removable and can re-invent itself quickly with little effort. Gluck is diverse and her tastes often unpredictable; however, she does prefer short titles with long poems.

– Lauren MacArthur

The Mad Hatter's BAP Trivia Quiz by Lauren MacArthur

1. Name the poet that is most widely-represented in BAP and has yet to be a guest editor.

2. What is the shortest title of a poem ever to appear in BAP?

3. What is the shortest poem ever to appear in a volume?

4. What is the longest poem ever to appear?

5. Which five journals have contributed the greatest number of poems?

6. Estimate the average number of hats-per-volume that an assiduous hat-obsessed reader will encounter in an edition of The Best American Poetry.

7. What color appears most often? 
8. How many guest editors have been U.S. poets laureate, and who are they?

9. What is the best first name you can have if you are a man and you want to have a poem chosen for BAP?

10. Same question as number 9, for a woman.

11. What last name has designated the greatest number of poets?

12. Name the poet whose first and last names rhyme.

-- Lauren MacArthur

From the Archives

Accidental Abundance

In discussing the supposed gulf between abstract and representational art, the late French painter Jean Helion wrote in his journal:  "I wonder . . . whether all the valid painting being done today doesn't bear certain resemblances which escape us at the present time."  One could wonder the same thing about poetry, but in the meantime, while we wait for uniform utopia, the dissimilarities -- the splintering, the impurity -- could be those of life itself.  Life is what present American poetry gets to seem more like, and the more angles we choose to view it from, the more its amazing accidental abundance imposes itself.

                              -- John Ashbery
                                  The Best American Poetry 1988

--sdh