The book is set up to be read either from the front or the back, complete with a reversed table of contents at the end. Read from the front, it's a book about American racism and immigrant experience.

THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2021, edited by David Lehman and Tracy K. Smith.(Scribner, cloth, $35; paper, $20.) This annual anthology touches on Covid, George Floyd and much else that’s timely and ...