The best American poetry

1989. Foreword / David Lehman

Introduction / Donald Hall

Anxiety's prosody / A.R. Ammons

Meanwhile / John Ashbery

Northern idylls / Beth Bentley

It is marvelous / Elizabeth Bishop

My father at 85 / Robert Bly

Twins of a gazelle which feed among the lilies / Catherine Bowman

Of the knowledge of good and evil / George Bradley

What I heard at the discount department store / David Budbill

Hotel Tropicana / Michael Burkard

A minor tremor / Amy Clampitt

For Robert Duncan / Tom Clark

Paris / Clark Coolidge

True solar holiday / Douglas Crase

Age / Robert Creeley

Letter from the poetry editor / Peter Davison

The reading / David Dooley

The late notebooks of Albrecht Dürer / Rita Dove

Letting the puma go / Stephen Dunn

The rabbit story / Russell Edson

The rivals / Daniel Mark Epstein

A date with Robbe-Grillet / Elaine Equi

BW / Aaron Fogel

Powers of Congress / Alice Fulton

Voyage / Suzanne Gardiner

In violet / Debora Greger

A dark thing inside the day / Linda Gregg

Cafeteria in Boston / Thom Gunn

History / Donald Hall

Kinneret / John Hollander

Twenty-five (from The novel) / Paul Hoover

The good reason for our forgetting / Marie Howe

Heat lightning in a time of drought / Andrew Hudgins

Every day there are new memos / Rodney Jones

An awful lot was happening / Lawrence Joseph

Dance lessons of the thirties / Donald Justice

Getting dressed in the dark / Vickie Karp

Three sons at the end of summer / Jane Kenyon

Six Hamlets / Kenneth Koch

The ransom / Phillis Levin

Dog poem / Philip Levin

Teste monial / Anne MacNaughton

Condo auction / Harry Mathews

Kidnapped / Robert Mazzocco

Showing us the fields / James McCorkle

The fifties / Robert McDowell

The abandonment / Wesley McNair

A room at the heart of things / James Merrill

The warmth of hot chocolate / Thylias Moss

The wellspring / Sharon Olds

Some questions you might ask

Mary Oliver

The bridge of sighs / Steve Orlen

Sun / Michael Palmer

Movie / Bob Perelman

At Pleasure Bay / Robert Pinsky

Sappho comments on an exhibition of experimental landscapes / Anna Rabinowitz

The shoebox / Mark Rudman

Broken gauges / David St. John

Valentino's hair / Yvonne Sapia

Trappings / Lynda Schraufnagel

The lost golf ball / David Shapiro

Tennyson / Karl Shapiro

The white room / Charles Simic

The people next door / Louis Simpson

The memory of Cock Robin dwarfs W.D. / W.D. Snodgrass

Building / Gary Snyder

Sunday afternoon at Fulham Palace / Elizabeth Spires

Last day / William Stafford

Reading the facts about Frost in The Norton Anthology / George Starbuck

Movie / Patricia Storace

Reading in place / Mark Strand

Harvest, 1925 / Eleanor Ross Taylor

Trust me / Jean Valentine

Lying / Richard Wilbur

The muse of distance / Alan Williamson

Madrid / Jay Wright.

2001. Notes for a Sermon on the Mount / Nin Andrews

The plan / Rae Armantrout

Crossroads in the past / John Ashbery

Jazz / Angela Ball

Crossed-over, fiend-snitched, x-ed out / Mary Jo Bang

When the gods put on meter / Cal Bedient

Vague poem / Elizabeth Bishop

The French generals / Robert Bly

Sonnet around Stephanie / Lee Ann Brown

Notes about my face / Michael Burkard

Heartland / Trent Busch

Blouse of felt / Amina Calil

Longing, a documentary / Anne Carson

Ceriserie / Joshua Clover

Snow day / Billy Collins

En famille / Robert Creeley

A mown lawn / Lydia Davis

Ma Ramon / R. Erica Doyle

The cloud of unknowing / Christopher Edgar

T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. / Thomas Sayers Ellis

The art of the snake story / Amy England

Contemporary American poetry / Alan Feldman

Little Dantesque / James Galvin

Time / Louise Glück

My Chakabuku mama, a comic tale / Jewelle Gomez

Gulls / Jorie Graham

Waterborne / Linda Gregerson

The singers change, the music goes on / Linda Gregg

Enough rain for Agnes Walquist / Allen Grossman

Her garden / Donald Hall

Sarabande on attaining the age of seventy-seven / Anthony Hecht

Nights / Lyn Hejinian

The formation of soils / Brenda Hillman.