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Accompanying a unique exhibition at the respected Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, this book is a remarkable combination of the work of poets and artists, that explores in new ways the relationship between the visual and the verbal. In his preface, Charles Bernstein writes:"Not words and pictures but poems as visual objects. Not poems about pictures but pictures that are poems. Not works closed in a book but hanging on a wall or suspended from the ceiling or rising from the floor or sounding from inside a figure or embedded with paint on a canvas or written in the sky or flickering on a screen." Co-curator Jay Sanders explains in his introduction:"We had a gallery and we wanted to flood it with poetry. Not with "poetic" artwork, but with actual poetry, made by poets. But, we have gallery walls, not pages in a book. So we organized a show of art overrun with poetry and a show of poetry riddled with art."

Artists include among others: Carl Andre, Arakawa, Susan Bee, Tom Phillips, Mira Schor, Kiki Smith, Philip Guston, Wallace Berman, Robert Smithson, Richard Tuttle, Michael Snow. Poets include among others: David Antin, Robert Creeley, Clark Coolidge, Mei Mei Berssenbrugge, John Cage, Madeline Gins, Lyn Hejinian, Kenneth Goldsmith, Robert Grenier, Tan Lin, Jackson MacLow, Steve McCaffery, Emily McVarnish, Nick Piombino.

Edited by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders.
42 b&w.
7 x 10 in. ... Read more

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Eccentric, intercultural, learned, and hip, these poems by a noted translator span continents, decades, and galaxies: "any news from Alpha Centauri / they have their own scene there pretty small pretty quiet / a fortnightly newsletter printed on green gas." Required reading for students and fans of the masters of modern poetry. "Treading the fine line between farce and pathos," this selection of the best work from the past thirty-five years by Anselm Hollo is an antidote to "a flowery earnestness that tries to convey an oh-aren't-we-all-in-this-together sort of feeling" prevalent in some contemporary poetry. ... Read more

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Since its inception in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has achieved brand-name status in the literary world as the preeminent showcase of each year's most important contributions to American poetry. This year's exceptional volume, edited by Robert Creeley, a figure revered across teh wide spectrum of American poetry, features a diverse mix of established masters, rising stars and the leading lights of a younger generation. The pleasure of the poems selected here,Creeley explains in his introduction, is "that they caught my fancy, some almost outrageously, some by their quiet, nearly diffident manner, some by unexpected turns of thought or insight, others by a confident authority and intent." With comments from the poets elucidating their work, a thought-provoking introduction from Creeley, and Lehman's always popular foreword assessing the current state of poetry, The Best American Poetry 2002 will prove as irresistible to new readers as it is indispensable for poetry fans everywhere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

The Best Anthology Ever
For a great many years now, I have been buying and reading cover to cover the annual issues of "Great American Poetry."This is by far the best example the anthology has had to offer. Every poem is unique, powerful with a vast command of language and nuance, and they each invite rereading after rereading.These gems are diverse and yet extraordinary in their methods. The poets are seen at their finest. 2001-2002 must have been a highly creative year.

Never mind the bollocks, buy this book!
For many years, I have been taking the Best American Poetry books down from the shelf at the local bookstore for a peek, but I never felt compelled to buy one until I read the 2002 version selected by Robert Creeley. I've always had more respect than affection for Creeley, finding it hard to get into his stuff, but I loved the synergy (Marketing stole this word from the Greeks--I'm stealing it back) produced by the juxtaposition of devil-may-care experimentation with the best of more traditional,"mainstream" offerings in this volume.My favorite examples of these divergent impulses here are Jenny Boully's "The Body," a poem in the form of footnotes to blank pages (this poem has been ridiculed in other reviews found here, but I find it daring and exhilirating--in fact, I wish I had thought of it first) and Donald Hall's "Affirmation," an astonishingly straightforward and devastating poem that is one of my favorites from his body of work and one that should warm (freeze?) the heart of the most esthetically conservative reader.

Even though I received a B.A. in English with a focus on creative writing ten years ago, I have only recently begun to understand the struggle between those who would keep poetry at a place it never was (the "School of Quietude" in Ron Silliman's terms--you MUST read his blog, it's good whether you agree or not, just as long as you care about poetry) and those who want poetry to continue to evolve (not "improve"), no matter what unexpected and scary turns it may take (what Mr Silliman calls, in our time, the "post-avant").This book seems to have frightened most of the reviewers who felt compelled to contribute their opinions here, which frightened state they express as distaste. Just know that the most innovative and forward poetry that has lasted was seen in its time as "eccentric" or "inaccessible" or "repugnant" or "unreadable" or "incomprehensible," ad nauseam, from Euripides to T.S. Eliot, who, despite of his conversion to stultifying artistic conservatism and his weird adoption by "the Establishment" (and weirder disinheritance by "the anti-Establishment"), told us, if I remember correctly, that meaning should not be sought when first reading poetry that is new to us, but rather an understanding of the qualities of language the poet is presenting to us.

[This may be a complete misrepresentation of Eliot; I'm sorry I don't remember where I read his statement about reading for meaning.Anyway, people who hate this book will respond that there is no quality to the language here, the good old days were the best, blah blah blah etc etc, but this is as good a place as any to end this review.]

Unfortunately
Few of the poems in this collection struck fire in me, a smaller percentage than earlier volumes in the series.

By far the worst of the series
I have never been a fan of Creeley's work ("For Love" is honestly one of the worst poetry books I ever wasted a yard sale dollar on), but I still expected better from his BAP selections, which are totally lacking in flavor.Creeley tries to convert readers to his surrealist style, rife with inaccessible, abstract dream-language, most of which here is narcissistic, utterly incoherent, and reads like the journal ramblings of a Goth teenager. Someone who does not like poetry would not change his/her mind after reading BAP 2002, and that is exactly why I find this collection repugnant. As a poet myself, I have an open mind, experiment with nontraditional modes of writing, and enjoy the surrealist and renegade edge of many contemporary writers.But this edition was useless, both as enjoyable reading and as writing inspiration.90% of the poems are meaningless, flat, and unfulfilling.Additionally, they were culled almost exclusively from the internet and unheard-of publications. I strongly support small presses and am always eager to sample new publications, but to ignore more established journals which consistently produce quality work feels disrespectful somehow.To be fair, there are a few bright spots in this edition--the poems by Broughton, Burkard, Chapman, Cooley, di Prima, Equi, Friedlander, Gizzi, Goldbarth, Hall, Kumin, Merwin, Myles, Metres, Olds, Sadoff, Warsh, Wier and Wright are worth a second read.But an anthology such as this shouldn't be assessed on the quality of each individual poem, rather on the tone and texture of the whole.The "picture" that BAP 2002 paints is a painful, wasteful, headache-inducing one. Creeley himself says in the introduction, "These poems are better than the best, each and every one of them. If you don't agree, then go find your own." Please, please take his advice.

An Unsurprising Disappointment
Reader take note: if you are curious about contemporary poetry and are looking for an interesting place to start, this anthology is not for you.Try 2001 or 2003.Skip 2002. One of the interesting things about this series is discovering the guest editor, always a notable contemporary poet, as reader of contemporary poetry.What exactly was Robert Creeley thinking?Most of the poems in this volume are emminently forgettable; others unreadable.I enjoy reading this anthology every year, but in this case it was a real struggle. ... Read more

Product Description
Susan Rothenberg first gained critical attention in the mid-seventies when she introduced the simple, outlined image of an animal onto the austere canvas of Minimalism. Since then, her exploration of the formal tenets of painting has been manifested through increasingly complex compositions, rendered in a recognizably gestural style. This combination has in part allowed for the consistent interpretation of the artist's work as being both emotionally intense and a serious contribution to the tradition of heroic painting.

Since moving to the Southwest from New York City a decade ago, Rothenberg has created a body of work that is at once a continuation and evolution of previous concerns, and an expression of dramatic changes. Susan Rothenberg: Paintings from the Nineties, published on the occasion of a major exhibit of the artist's works from the past decade, brings together twenty of her most significant recent paintings. As these works have never been shown before as a group, this book provides the first opportunity to consider a crucial period in the career of one of our most important contemporary artists. Along with Rothenberg's haunting, evocative images, reproduced in full color, the volume includes an important critical introduction by Cheryl Brutvan, Beal Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a poetic response to the artist's paintings by Robert Creeley. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "Robert Creeley," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Robert Creeley in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Robert Creeley when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name Robert Creeley, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more