Left Hand, Meet Right Hand

Joan Houlihan's ongoing series on the state of contemporary American poetry functions as somewhat of a bracing tonic in this season of Top 10 This and Best That.  In the latest dispatch, she takes on The Best American Poetry 2004, comparing the inroductions of guest editor Lyn Hejinian and series editor David Lehman:

To be fair, Hejinian admits her reservations about taking on the responsibility for making choices given she doesn't think there is such a thing as “best”:                      

Initially I had qualms about taking on the editorship. My problem was simple and, going by what the editors of some of the previous volumes in this series have said in their own introductions, it seems to have vexed many of us. I don't believe in "bestness.”

But, to be fairer (to the reader), wouldn't it have been more ethical for her to turn down the job if that's her belief? It seems to me that if anything is a disqualifying factor for the job of editor of a Best of American Poetry anthology, not believing in the concept of “bestness” is it.

Meanwhile, Lehman, just a few pages away, is operating in another world, a world where his anthology series has a kinship with those of Louis Untermeyer or Oscar Williams, a world where:                                                 

An anthology aspiring to represent the best work in the field requires faith and trust: the editor's faith that a serious general audience for poetry does exist; the reader's trust in the editor's judgment.

And even as Hejinian insists in her introduction, there is no real “best,” Lehman maintains in his that an anthology inevitably represents a selection process of some kind:                                                 

Anthologies are selective; they project an editor's taste, but they are also exercises in criticism. Their job is not only to reflect what is out there but to pick and choose among the possibilities. Whether they set out to reinforce the prevailing taste or to modify it, they sometimes end up doing a bit of both. … All anthologies provide an evaluative function.

Did they read each other's introductions? Or do they just worship in churches too far apart to hear each other?

Hilarious.  (It should also be noted that Hejinian does no better with "poetry": ...it is impossible to define poetry once and for all or to delimit its space. What is or isn't a poem? What makes something poetic? These questions remain open.  Well, should we sign over the check to someone with conviction, then?)

Comments

[Lisa]

As a poet and writer, I think I can sort of relate to Hejinian's views on "bestness" (not that I was asked to edit the Best Am Poets of course)

There are so many different styles and voices in poetry. I know who and what I like, but for me personally to say that because work falls into my definition of the kind of rythem, voice, style, subject that I respond to therefore that means it is "the best" would be hard for me.

Last summer I went to a writing workshop that had a lot of really wonderful and respected poets reading at it, some I loved and others I thought were terrible, and I'm sure there were probably others there who thought just the opposite of what I did. It is so subjective. There are even poets who are among the greats that I once loved and now can look at them and think, "Isn't this work kind of redundant and needy as a whole?"

On the other hand, all that grandstanding about bestness on the editor's part could also just be a way of feeling less pressured to include the work of people in one's circle of friends which I think happens often in the poetry world.