Present Tense: Poets in the World, edited by Mark Pawlak, $16 paper, 212 pages, Hanging Loose Press.

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According to the Introduction by editor, Mark Pawlak, "My aim in compiling this collection has been to find the best available work by living American poets that is, broadly speaking, political in nature."

Tall boasts invite hard looks. The editor must not have searched long or far if he believes this is as good as it can get in the current US of A. My suspicion is that the editor confuses poets (and fellow editors) who have also published with Hanging Loose Press with "the best available work, etc.": two things which are not necessarily the same. Rounding up the usual suspects from one's own backyard does not for a cutting edge political poetry anthology make.

What does that term, "political poetry" mean? Does it mean whatever we want it to mean? In an era of Balkanized identity politics, where everybody is the enemy except me and mine, we can talk about "the political in poetry" a thousand ways—often defining the meaning right out of it.

If we're looking for definitions in this anthology, we would find what is often known as the Poetry of Witness, a term popularized by Carolyn Forche, which tends to imply a passive, bystander role. None of that rolling up your sleeves and wading into the thick of change with ideas and opinions. That would explain why some of the work in this anthology has a reporting quality about it, as if it were a sequence of filed AP dispatches. This is a frequent confusion about what political poetry ought to be: that it ought to function as a slightly more lyrical arm of the news service. Unfortunately, it often comes with much of the pseudo-objective trappings that the major media propaganda outlets affect, as if it were presenting dispassionate details from a lofty perspective. Even many news outlets and blogs have abandoned this fiction and are relearning the art of callin' 'em as we see 'em. We have protest work here, yes, but for the most part rather mild and nothing too loud or angry or lefty that might upset liberals. One noteworthy exception to that is Maureen Owen's longish poem, "Topography", which is as close to a howl as we're going to get in these pages. Certainly there is little that would be called revolutionary in nature.

However, that's not to say this isn't a good anthology. It is. It is not the best anthology of political poetry in America, not by a long shot. And that's not counting the ones knocking around in manuscript form that can't get the time of day from publishers. Nevertheless, this one is worth a read (and a re-read) from your local library, or even to buy if you can find it used. There are many good poems here, and not just those by well-known poets such as Sherman Alexie, Adrienne Rich, Joy Harjo and Kimiko Hahn. Some personal standouts were the work by the always welcome, always excellent Martin Espada, and Hayan Charara—whose work I had not encountered before and was a delightful discovery. Greatly appreciated also was the sly humor of Harryette Mullen, whose short poem, "Bilingual Instructions", is a hoot and maybe the best thing on class and race in the whole book.

I could have done without the rambling free-jazz of Anselm Hollo, or the oddly boring and curiously irrelevant Donna Brook, or Dick Lourie, who seems like a nice yet slightly lost and befuddled middle class suburban guy wringing his hands over injustice while checking his watch, or the just plain crap of Ed Friedman. On the other hand, the work by D. Nurske, Bill Zavatsky, Hettie Jones and Janine Pommy Vega more than make up for the few jarring weaknesses herein.

It is always refreshing to see work that is political in nature, whether broadly speaking or not, and much of it so finely written by a collection of talented poets. Whenever poets of such obvious gifts as Sherman Alexie or Kimiko Hahn turn their talents to the political, you know it's going to be good. For those who want to see yet another angle on how it can be done—from the stables of Hanging Loose Press—this is a good introduction on how to respond to the world from a political perspective in poetry. For that reason alone it is an anthology worthy of study.