Please Excuse This Poem
100 New Poets for the Next Generation
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
One hundred poems. One hundred voices. One hundred different points of view.
Here is a cross-section of American poetry as it is right now—full of grit and love, sparkling with humor, searing the heart, smashing through boundaries on every page. Please Excuse This Poem features one hundred acclaimed younger poets from truly diverse backgrounds and points of view, whose work has appeared everywhere from The New Yorker to Twitter, tackling a startling range of subjects in a startling range of poetic forms. Dealing with the aftermath of war; unpacking the meaning of “the rape joke”; sharing the tender moments at the start of a love affair: these poems tell the world as they see it.
Editors Brett Fletcher Lauer and Lynn Melnick have crafted a book that is a must-read for those wanting to know the future of poetry. With an introduction from award-winning poet, editor, and translator Carolyn Forché, Please Excuse This Poem has the power to change the way you look at the world. It is The Best American Nonrequired Reading—in poetry form.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This wide-ranging collection of poems from "one hundred younger poets firmly launched on their careers" (as poet Carolyn Forch writes in the introduction) offers a loose format that avoids dividing the poems by theme. Instead, poems about complicated love, urban and small-town life, ethnicity, violence, and myriad other topics are presented as a steady stream of powerful language, united by a sense of urgency. Josh Bell's playful "Poem Voted Most Likely" has a trace of Ginsburg ("To drink its hot-dog water like a good fellow/ To laminate the small of your back/ To act as interim liaison to the Psychedelic Mole People/ To huff on tractor fumes"), while Patricia Lockwood's "Rape Joke" takes aim at sexual aggression ("The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn't know, like what else would a rape joke say?" The scope and breadth of topics, perspectives, and poetic forms make the collection a wellspring of inspiration for readers and writers honing their own skills. Ages 14 up.
