Best of Memphis Anthology 2003 Book

A very sober collection of thirty-five poets, giving a pretty generous selection-- at least five poems, and often more-- from each. The introduction makes the case that these poets are post-poetry wars, and I guess that means they are supposed to be wideranging because they are post-orthodoxy. I didn't find that to be quite true-- the poets largely wrote the same poem over and over here. It's a good poem, a serious poem that while it's interested in language, and especially in sentence and stanza as vehicles for thought, is more than words interested in thought-- these are dense, probing, meditative-philosophical poems of a sort of well-read, well-fed type. These are poems that rise out of a study of poetic tradition, and which, I think, see themselves first as part of that tradition, and only secondarily as being the products of lived experience.

I really don't mean to crack on the poems in this book, many of which were very enjoyable to read, just to suggest that as a book, it lacks a little variety and verve. I found it by the end a little dull, which is too bad because the last poets in the book (especially Wunderlich and C. Dale Young but also editor Yezzi), in any other circumstance, would seem anything but that. It's hard not to feel like there'd be more pleasure in reading any one of these poets in isolation than mashed back-to-back-to-back like they are here.