Source: The Dispatch
by Timothy Sandefur
“New York poet David Lehman has overseen publication of Scribner’s annual Best American Poetry anthology for almost four decades now. But this summer, the 77-year-old Lehman announced that the series’[s] 2025 installment will be the last. Although he says his decision was sparked only by a desire for ‘new adventures,’ it’s hard to see it as anything but the falling of another tree in the artistic forest. True, the purported ‘best’ often included lousy work … but it also included samples from some of America’s best living poets, including A.E. Stallings, Amit Majmudar, and Stephen Kampa, and offered curious readers a chance to dip their toes into an art form that, more than any other, has been torn by the competing forces of our divided and divisive culture. Where can they look now?” (12/22/25)
https://thedispatch.com/article/best-american-poetry-shutter-art-form/