The Best American Poetry 2004 Series Editor David Lehman

The Best American Poetry 2004celebrates the vitality and richness of poetry in the United States and Canada today. Guest editor Lyn Hejinian, acclaimed for her own innovative writing, has chosen seventy-five important new poems and contributed a provocative introductory essay. Through her selections, Hejinian has created an essential nexus -- a meeting place for readers to encounter an extraordinary range of poets. With illuminating comments from the writers, and series editor David Lehman's insightful foreword evaluating the current state of the art,The Best American Poetry 2004is an indispensable addition to a series that has established itself as the first word on what's new and noteworthy in the poetry of our times.

Lyn Hejinian was born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1941. A poet, essayist, and translator, she is the author or coauthor of more than two dozen books, including The Fatalist, My Life, and The Language of Inquiry, a collection of her critical essays. She recently received the sixty-sixth Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for distinguished poetic achievement at midcareer. She lives in Berkeley and teaches at the University of California. David Lehman is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and The New School