Birth of the Best

David Lehman launched The Best American Poetry in 1988 and continues as the annual anthology’ s general editor. Educated at Columbia and Cambridge universities, he has written for publications ranging from Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post to American Heritage, Art in America, Partisan Review, and People. He has taught at Hamilton College, NYU, Bennington, Columbia, and the New School. He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry and is a contributing editor for The American Scholar.