The Best American Poetry 2022 (Best American Poetry)

Matthew Zapruder picks the poems for the 2022 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).

Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a selection of the year’s most brilliant, striking, and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work.

For The Best American Poetry 2022 guest editor Matthew Zapruder, whose own poems are “for everyone, everywhere...democratic in [their] insights and feelings” (NPR), has selected the seventy-five new poems that represent American poetry today at its most dynamic. Chosen from print and online magazines, from the popular to the little-known, the selection is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.

The series and guest editors contribute valuable introductory essays that illuminate the current state of American poetry.

About The Authors:
David Lehman, the series editor of The Best American Poetry, is also the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His eleven books of poetry include The Morning Line, Playlist, Poems in the Manner Of, New and Selected Poems, When a Woman Loves a Man and The Daily Mirror. The most recent of his many nonfiction books are One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day, as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. He is an editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. In 2016–2017 he held the annually rotating position of editor of the poetry column for The New York Times Magazine. He teaches in the MFA program and English department at Saint Mary’s College of California. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.