The Best American Poetry 2004, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by general editor David Lehman. The guest editor for the year was Lyn Hejinian.
Hejinian, a "partisan of the Language School and the New York poets", according to Jacob Stockinger, editor of the culture desk at The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, "seems to have gotten caught up in a poet-as-political activist or social commentator point of view [...] Perhaps that's why she even seems hostile to the notion of beauty, favoring relevance instead." Stockinger found much of the poetry in the volume, a "graduate school inscrutability without either meaning or music." Some of the pleasant surprises in the volume, for Stockinger, were "Here 2" by Bob Perelman and Jean Day's "Prose of the World Order". Stockinger, Jacob, "'Best' poetry is short on 'bestness'", book review in The Capital Times of Madison Wisconsin November 12, 2004, accessed from Newsbank.com (subscription required) on October 13, 2007
Ron Smith, writer-in-residence at St. Christopher's School and director of its Writers Institute, wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the strong points of the collection are its "wit, humor and comedy". He added: "Ms. Hejinian's aesthetic is certainly an intellectual one, rather than an emotional one. The aim is not to move a reader, but to rev up his cognitive functions." Smith thought the volume's best poems were the contributions from Kim Addonizio, Craig Arnold, Billy Collins, Carla Harryman, Jane Hirshfield, Danielle Pafunda, James Tate, Paul Violi, and David Wagoner. Smith, Ron, "Traditionalists will take umbrage at this new collection of poetry", Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, September 5, 2004, accessed October 13, 2007
Poets and poems included Poet Poem Publication(s) where poem previously appearedKim Addonizio "Chicken" Five Points Will Alexander from "Solea of the Simooms" No: a journal of the arts Bruce Andrews from "Dang Me" SHINY Rae Armantrout "Almost" Mississippi Review Craig Arnold "Your friend's arriving on the bus" Open City John Ashbery "Wolf Ridge" Conjunctions Mary Jo Bang "The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity" Ploughshares Alan Bernheimer "20 Questions" SHINY, The Forward Charles Bernstein "Sign Under Test" Michigan Quarterly Review Anselm Berrigan "Token Enabler" Rattapallax, Mississippi Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back? Mark Bibbins from "Blasted Fields of Clover Bring Harrowing and Regretful Sighs" Boston Review Oni Buchanan "The Walk" Conduit Michael Burkard "a cloud of dusk" Lyric Anne Carson "Gnosticism" The New Yorker T.J. Clark "Landscape with a Calm" The Threepenny Review Billy Collins "The Centrifuge" Fulcrum Jack Collom "3-4-00" Ecopoetics Michael Costello "Ode to My Flint and Boom Bolivia" Columbia Poetry Review Michael Davidson "Bad Modernism" No: a journal of the arts Olena Kalytiak Davis "You Art A Scholar, Horation, Speak To It" Tin House Jean Day "Prose of the World Order" 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics Linh Dinh "13" American Poetry Review Rita Dove "All Souls" The New Yorker Rachel Blau DuPlessis "Draft 55:Quiptych" Conjunctions kari edwards "short sorry" Aufgabe Kenward Elmslie "Sibling Rivalry" New American Writing Aaron Fogel "337,000, December, 2000" Pataphysics Ariel Greenberg "Saints" The Canary Ted Greenwald "Anyway" SHINY Barbara Guest "Nostalgia of the Infinite" No: a journal of the arts Carla Harryman "from Baby" Sal Mimeo Jane Hirshfield "Poe: An Assay (I)" The Threepenny Review, Poetry Daily John Hollander "For Fiddle-De-Dee" Hotel Amerika Fanny Howe "Catholic" Chicago Review Kenneth Irby "[Record]" No: a journal of the arts Major Jackson from "Urban Renewal" Provincetown Arts, Poetry Daily Marc Jaffee "King of Repetition" Hanging Loose Kenneth Koch "The Man" SHINY John Koethe "To an Audience" TriQuarterly Yusef Komunyakaa "Ignis Fatuus" The New Republic Sean Manzano Labrador "The Dark Continent" Rapidfeed Ann Lauterbach "After Mahler" No: a journal of the arts Nathaniel Mackey "Sound and Cerement" Hotel Amerika Harry Mathews "Lateral Disregard" SHINY Steve McCaffery "Some Versions of Pastoral" TriQuarterly K. Silem Mohammad "Mars Needs Terrorists" Kiosk Erín Moure "8 Little Theatres of the Cornices" No: a journal of the arts Paul Muldoon "The Last Time I Saw Chris" The New Yorker Eileen Myles "No Rewriting" Mississippi Review Alice Notley "State of the Union" Columbia Poetry Review Jeni Olin "Blue Collar Holiday" Hanging Loose, Exquisite Corpse, Jacket Danielle Pafunda "RSVP" Pleiades Heidi Peppermint "Real Toads" La Petite Zine Bob Perelman "Here 2" DCPoetry Anthology 2003 Carl Phillips "Pleasure" Tin House Robert Pinsky "Samba" The Threepenny Review Carl Rakosi "In the First Circle of Limbo" American Poetry Review Ed Roberson "Ideas Gray Suits Bowler Hats Baal" Chicago Review Kit Robinson "The 3D Matchmove Artist" DCPoetry Anthology 2003 Carly Sachs "the story" PMS Jennifer Scappettone "III" Boston Review Frederick Seidel "Love Song" Fence, Harper's David Shapiro "A Burning Interior" SHINYRon Silliman "Compliance Engineering" Antennae Bruce Smith "Song of the Ransom of the Dark" POOL Brian Kim Stefans "They're Putting a New Door In" Boston Review Gerald Stern "Dog That I Am" Lyric Virgil Suarez "La Florida" New England Review Arthur Sze "Acanthus" The Butcher Shop James Tate "Bounden Duty" American Poetry Review Edwin Torres "The Theorist Has No Samba!" Van Gogh's Ear Rodrigo Toscano "Meditatio Lectoris" Kiosk, Rattapallax Paul Violi "Appeal to Grammarians" Green Mountains Review David Wagoner "Trying to Make Music" Hanging Loose Charles Wright "In Praise of Han Shan" Five Points
See also 2004 in poetry
Notes
External links Web page for contents of the book, with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared Best American Poetry Web site main page A review by Joan Houlihan in Boston Comment A review by David Orr in The New York Times Book Review.