Inside Out/Outside In: Exploring American Literature Book

While this did, as always, have a fair number of poems I did not like (I have come to realize I do not like James Richardson's "Vectors" series--at all), but the overwhelming majority were good. As an alphabetical anthology, continuity between pieces is pretty much nonexistent, but that is okay given the enormous number of great poems. This one really does live up to its title "best" in spite of its weak poems. I found some great pieces by "old friends"--James Schuyler, Billy Collins, Sharon Olds--as well as some new names: Dick Allen, David Clewell, Peter Davis, and others. Having those discoveries is great for enjoying the book.

Some of my favorite pieces were "What You Have to Get over" (one of my new discoveries), "This Poem Had Better Be about the World We Actually Live In", "Four 'Addresses'", "Play" (truly awsome piece about identity--in an unusual punctuation-less format), "The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu", "Having My Say-So" and "Carrying on Like a Crow". There are more with approximately this caliber, but these are some of the very best.

On the other hand, "Vectors 2.3" was unpoetic, as was "From 'The Jar of Balloons or the Uncooked Rice'" (a twelve page list of questions). "Presidential Blackness" did not really hang together, which was the biggest problem with the weak pieces, and many of them seemed flat and inelegant as well. These poems do end up being rather few and far between, so the collection as a whole works exceedingly well.