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Better Than The Best American Poetry is a love song to poetry and the poets who never conceded their vision. It's a late affirmation to the poets who never came close to money and fame but who still wrote brilliantly. Here are the World War II veterans who barely survived the war but somehow made poems out of plane crashes and tragedy. Here are the poets who escaped Vietnam to end up addicted and in jail, only to be saved by what they wrote. This collection is for the go-go dancers who knew they were better than the singers on stage and for the writers stuck in factories who turned overtime into art. These poems shower praise on the often overlooked poets and visionaries who stood in the fire all day and still managed to write at night. These poems mock the silliness of the poetry business, and the pompousness of the poseurs and careerists. These poems are written by a poet looking to make a life out of art while worrying how to pay the bills. Marianne Moore famously wrote about poetry, "I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in it after all, a place for the genuine." This is a book that pushes through contempt to reach the genuine. Better Than the Best American Poetry is a love letter to the underclass of artists who always rise above.
"The title for this book is perfect, and Newman is right - The Best American Poetry is shit. Everybody knows it and Newman said it and put his name on it because he cares. Newman reads a lot and it always shows up in his poems in great and unexpected ways. He writes about writers that matter who hold a place in our hearts and dreams. The poets he loves become part of his story. Newman writes about the daily grind, the parts of life that don't fit together so good, the shit jobs we work to get by but fail us, the fights, the drinks, the drugs, the hand jobs, the morning sex, not enough sex, the bad girlfriends that steal, and some good days that shine through, but more than anything, he writes about trying to be and wanting to be a poet. In this book, Newman writes that "There are poems so true they should be called knives." Newman writes those poems and we need to read them!"-Joseph Shields, Nerve Cowboy editor, author Wisconsin Daze
