I was reading the BAP 2003 in the bookstore yesterday. I couldn't bear to actually buy it. The poem by Pinsky on 9/11 is truly awful. Pompous use of the word "we" and a sort of clumsy attempt at a "public poetry."

Creeley's 2002 BAP is actually quite a stimulating book, with Silliman and Fanny Howe, Coolidge, and only a handful of the obligatory dull poets of the Hall/Howard variety. If I were going to buy a book, it would have been this instead of the 2003 volume. It does have more African-American poets than other years, but there is a total exclusion of language poetry and many other vital tendencies. You get the feeling Lehman is leaning over the shoulder of the guest editor (whoever that is any given year) and imposing certain poems and poets.