Playlist: Poems

11 / 22 / 17 A good day for a drive to the country underneath the apple tree with Carmen McRae proving you can sing and talk at the same time ＂and hear the bluebirds sing＂ she sings as if there were a hyphen separating ＂blue＂ from ＂birds＂ and we ＂shoot up＂ with summertime

David Lehman is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry and Great American Prose Poems. He is also the general editor of the annual The Best American Poetry, which he initiated in 1988. His recent books of poetry include Poems in the Manner Of and New and Selected Poems. He has authored eight nonfiction books, including The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988-2014. Lehman has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.