Quarantine Session #85: The Best American Poetry 2021 with Tracy K. Smith + David Lehman

Summary

To commemorate the 2021 edition of the Best American Poetry anthology, Greenlight invited editor and former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, series editor David Lehman, and contributing poets Chen Chen, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Nancy Miller Gomez, and Dora Malech for a reverent evening. Selected by Smith, this year’s exceptional collection explores and reckons with the difficult emotions exposed by a year of collective upheaval and incalculable loss in a panoply of themes, voices, and styles. We laughed, we mourned, we paged through eternities, we rode Tilt-A-Whirls, and we remembered the sense of connection and healing for which we return, year after changing year, to poetry. Recorded November 9, 2021.