From the moment series editor David Lehman invokes the myth of Jacob wrestling the Angel in his introduction, the gloves are off in this year's installment of this popular annual anthology. Lehman devotes much of his introduction to throwing jabs at longtime sparring partner and professional poetry grump William Logan, whom Lehman calls "wounded" and "thin skinned." Guest editor Wagoner chooses to abstain from the scuffle, but there's no denying the aesthetic character amassed by the poems he's selected: American poets not only want to talk about their country this year, they want to talk violence in (and toward) their country. "They came to blow up America," writes John Ashbery, followed hard on his heels by Mark Bibbins, who warns our fifth state, "Connecticut! we're sawing you in half." Denise Duhamel envisions "How It Will End" ("We look around, but no one is watching us") and Rob Cook, in his bold and incantatory "Song of America," tells us, "I'm raising my child to drown and drop dead and to carry buildings on his back." It appears our poets are at last ready to confront the hysteria and violence of the past eight years, and who can say there's a better year than 2009 to begin. (Sept.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Sometimes a year doesn't fully oblige the editor of a best-of annual. Wagoner, one of the finest senior American poets, edited Poetry Northwest for 36 years, a fact reflected in the huge number of journals 56 from which he drew this volume's 75 entries. He knows where to look for poems. But that same large number becomes sadly ironic when one admits that there are no really exciting poems among these 75. There is a preponderance of intelligent, straightforward poems, and the ones that tend to crabbedness or incoherence compensate with richness of sound and image. Highlights include John Ashbery's collection-opener made up entirely of movie titles, Caleb Barber's grouchy lines about discovering an ex-girlfriend's notebook with unflattering comments about him, Billy Collins bitching about the novel under the camouflage of the title The Great American Poem, Denise Duhamel's disquieting analysis of a lovers' argument about a lovers' argument, and Charles Harper Webb's apotheosis of being young and in lust (best of its kind since the Coasters' Young Blood ).--Olson, Ray Copyright 2009 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.