Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century Book

Though I didn't like all of the poets represented in this book (I suppose that's not entirely feasible with any anthology), I give the book 5 stars because, well, I enjoy this "type" of poetry and it was cool discovering new poets to read. Now, this anthology certainly won't be for everyone, I think many of these poems are "experimental" in the sense that the poets are trying to write a "new" type of poem that plays with and sometimes undermines traditional poetic form and even narrative; moreover, this is a sampling of emerging poets who are mostly in their 30s so the work is imperfect at times. Or it's imperfect because the traditional form is made so unstable in these poems that they can sometimes seem...I don't know...ragged, drifting, confusing. It's not Hass or Blake or Po Chu-I or Mary Oliver, in other words.

Also, if you're not into "intellectual" poetry or poetry riffing on theory, then you might not like these poems. I don't mean poetry for smart people, I just mean that sometimes the poems are consciously complicated, kind of like the poetry of Alice Fulton. I'm not always in the mood for that myself but luckily I am now so reading the book was a pleasure. Several reviewers have complained about the MFA influence in the book and I can totally see that, too, it seems like half the writers are from Iowa, which pretty much leaves out tons of wonderful new poets of the same generation. These poems are all different and somehow all the same. But I think that's the point--it's a type of buffet of a new kind of writing.

On the other hand, when the poems are hot in this anthology, they're hot! I loved the performative work of Dan Beachy-Quick and the sardonic, endlessly circular and repetitive voice of Joshua Beckman. Josh Bell has one awesome imagination frothing with invention and Joel Brouler displays some mysterious, wrenching narrative poems. That's just the Bs! I also really loved the lush language of Monica Ferrel and the playful language of Thomas Sayers Ellis. There are many old favorites of mine: Suji Kwock Kim, A. Van Jordan, Terrance Hayes, Dana Levin, Richard Siken, Natasha Tretheway, and Arielle Greenberg (she's why I bought the anthology in the first place). I was re-introduced to Matthea Harvey and ran across a new poet I recently discovered, Ilya Kaminsky.

Poets I've been meaning to read but haven't were also showcased in this collection: Maurice Manning, Brenda Shaughnessy, and Tracy K. Smith. My new new favorite is Mark Wunderlich. I'll definitely be on the look out for more of his work.