I’m about two-thirds of the way through the excellent anthology The Best American Poetry 2025 (Terence Winch, editor), and so far Jill McDonough’s “What We Are For” is my favorite poem, winning my heart with its mentions of “Stop & Shop” (a grocery store chain here in the northeast), “turquoise sparkle nails,” “fuzzy baby bee,” “the lady cop in line,” and more.
Luckily for folks who may not have a copy of the book at hand, you can read McDonough’s poem online at the Threepenny Review, where it originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue. If this work doesn’t make you think of the E.M. Forster epigraph “only connect,” I’d would be surprised.
The “Best American Poetry” series is coming to a close with this 2025 volume. Elisa Gabbert wrote about it for the New York Times. Here is a gift link to her essay. (“Reading through my stack of ‘BAP’s, I was struck by the randomness of it all.”) Gabbert’s own best of the year list can be found at the New York Times.
On December 12th, the Poetry Friday roundup is at Linda Mitchell’s blog, A Word Edgewise.
In keeping with the “best” theme, here are some lists of best poetry books of the year:
Best of the Net/Sundress Publications (individual poems, not books)
CBC (Canadian poetry)
Debutiful (débuts)
Largehearted Boy. See also Largehearted Boy’s ginormous list of all the “Best Books of 2025.”
Photo by Susan Thomsen
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