Bettering American Poetry Volume 3

We feel that to “better” American poetry is to jam dominant systems of taste to the best of our abilities, and to resignify the very phrase “American poetry” with the languages that it so desperately lacks. We intend to center voices of resistance, subjectivities that emerge from the radical margins, artists whose Americanness transcends nationalism and other borders, perspectives historically denied institutional backing--in short, poets and poetries that are urgent and necessary but do not get along nicely with Power.


“Bettering American Poetry is a poetic battle cry for resistance. Comprised of captivating voices that transcend borders and defy the limits of our time, this anthology rattles readers awake with scintillating truth andtough love.”
—Jamia Wilson, Executive Director of the Feminist Press


“Imagine this. A calling of our names, a murmuring of our ghosts, a shouting in our blood. Thank you, dear editors and poets, for burning through to bone, for acknowledging our cuts, for naming our skeletal struggles. Thank you for this edge of safety, for this bit of home.”
—Ching-In Chen, author of The Heart’s Traffic and recombinant (winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Trans Poetry)


“Here lives poetry that resembles a sticky dance floor. Poetry that is at once terraformed music and primal shout and wet kiss and sweaty palm. The “American” in Bettering American Poetry is a kind of ghoulish placeholder for whichever more rebellious, more enlivening world comes next. Pay close attention to the future maps and manifestos and mantras these poets have dreamed up. Join them in the club, in the brown/black/feminist/decolonial commons, in which everyone is where they are supposed to be.”
—Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World, winner of the 2018 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize


“A world in which more than one anthology annually presents the poems their editors loved best is better than a world in which readers have to wait many years for the odd tome-like anthology to appear and attempt to define contemporary poetry. These anthologies help readers to understand what’s happening in poetry, and they especially help beginning poets to recognize the community they are joining. Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3 includes work by some of the most exciting poets writing today, and—and this is of the utmost importance—it makes poetry’s visible community larger.”
—Shane McCrae, author of The Gilded Auction Block and In the Language of My Captor