Best of the Best American Poetry

25th Anniversary Edition

David Lehman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781451658880
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451658897
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Robert Pinsky, distinguished poet and man of letters, selects the top 100 poems from twenty-five years of The Best American Poetry This special edition celebrates twenty-five years of the Best American Poetry series, which has become an institution. From its inception in 1988, it has been hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced), and obsessively scrutinized. Each volume consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major American poet acting as guest editor—from John Ashbery in 1988 to Mark Doty in 2012, with stops along the way for such poets as Charles Simic, A. R. Ammons, Louise Glück, Adrienne Rich, Billy Collins, Heather McHugh, and Kevin Young. Out of the 1, 875 poems that have appeared in The Best American Poetry, here are 100 that Robert Pinsky, the distinguished poet and man of letters, has chosen for this milestone edition.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Foreword by David Lehman
• Introduction: The Centrality of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
• Sherman Alexie, “Terminal Nostalgia”
• A. R. Ammons, “Garbage”
• Rae Armantrout, “Soft Money”
• John Ashbery, “Wakefulness”
• Margaret Atwood, “Bored”
• Frank Bidart, “Injunction”
• Stephanie Brown, “Feminine Intuition”
• Charles Bukowski, “Three Oranges”
• Anne Carson, “The Life of Towns”
• Henri Cole, “Self-Portrait as Four Styles of Pompeian Wall Painting”
• Billy Collins, “Dharma”
• Robert Creeley, “En Famille”
• Olena Kalytiak Davis, “You Art A Scholar, Horatio, Speak To It”
• Carl Dennis, “Our Generation”
• Susan Dickman, “Skin”
• Stephen Dobyns, “Desire”
• Mark Doty, “Difference”
• Rita Dove, “All Souls’ ”
• Denise Duhamel, “How It Will End”
• Stephen Dunn, “The Imagined”
• Alice Fulton, “Powers of Congress”
• Allen Ginsberg, “Salutations to Fernando Pessoa”
• Louise Glück, “Landscape”
• Jorie Graham, “Manifest Destiny”
• Linda Gregerson, “Safe”
• Linda Gregg, “The War”
• Thom Gunn, “Cafeteria in Boston”
• Donald Hall, “Prophecy”
• Mark Halliday, “The Opaque”
• Robert Hass, “Bush’s War”
• Terrance Hayes, “A House Is Not a Home”
• Lyn Hejinian, “The Polar Circle”
• Bob Hicok, “Having Intended to Merely Pick on an Oil Company, the Poem Goes Awry”
• Brenda Hillman, “Phone Booth”
• Edward Hirsch, “Man on a Fire Escape”
• Jane Hirshfield, “In Praise of Coldness”
• Tony Hoagland, “In a Quiet Town by the Sea”
• John Hollander, “The See-Saw”
• Richard Howard, “Like Most Revelations”
• Fanny Howe, “9-11-01”
• Marie Howe, “Magdalene—The Seven Devils”
• Major Jackson, From “Urban Renewal”
• Rodney Jones, “Plea for Forgiveness”
• Lawrence Joseph, “So Where Are We?”
• Jane Kenyon, “Reading Aloud to My Father”
• Kenneth Koch, “Proverb”
• John Koethe, “Sally’s Hair”
• Yusef Komunyakaa, “Facing It”
• Stanley Kunitz, “Touch Me”
• David Lehman, “Operation Memory”
• Philip Levine, “The Return”
• Amit Majmudar, “The Autobiography of Khwaja Mustasim”
• Sarah Manguso, “Hell”
• J. D. McClatchy, “My Mammogram”
• Heather McHugh, “Past All Understanding”
• James McMichael, From “The Person She Is”
• James Merrill, “The ‘Ring’ Cycle”
• W. S. Merwin, “The Stranger”
• Thylias Moss, “There Will Be Animals”
• Paul Muldoon, “The Loaf”
• Harryette Mullen, From “Muse & Drudge”
• Carol Muske-Dukes, “Hate Mail”
• Sharon Olds, “Q”
• Meghan O’Rourke, “The Window at Arles”
• Michael Palmer, “I Do Not”
• Carl Phillips, “Fretwork”
• Robert Pinsky, “Samurai Song”
• Claudia Rankine, “A short narrative of breasts and wombs in service of Plot entitled”
• Adrienne Rich, “Ends of the Earth”
• David Rivard, “The Rev. Larry Love Is Dead”
• J. Allyn Rosser, “Discounting Lynn”
• Mary Ruefle, “Middle School”
• Kay Ryan, “Outsider Art”
• Michael Ryan, “Switchblade”
• James Schuyler, “Let’s All Hear It for Mildred Bailey!”
• Lloyd Schwartz, “Pornography”
• Frederick Seidel, “The Death of the Shah”
• Alan Shapiro, “Country Western Singer”
• Charles Simic, “Country Fair”
• Tom Sleigh, “At the Pool”
• Gary Snyder, “Building”
• A. E. Stallings, “Asphodel”
• Ruth Stone, “The Latest Hotel Guest Walks Over Particles That Revolve in Seven Other Dimensions Controlling Latticed Space”
• Mark Strand, From “Dark Harbor”
• Pamela Sutton, “Forty”
• James Tate, “Bounden Duty”
• Natasha Trethewey, “Elegy”
• Paul Violi, “Counterman”
• Rosanna Warren, “Necrophiliac”
• Rachel Wetzsteon, “Time Pieces”
• Susan Wheeler, “A Filial Republic”
• Richard Wilbur, “This Pleasing Anxious Being”
• C. K. Williams, “A Hundred Bones”
• Anne Winters, “The Mill-Race”
• Charles Wright, “American Twilight”
• Franz Wright, “A Happy Thought”
• Robert Wrigley, “Religion”
• C. Dale Young, “Vespers”
• Dean Young, “No Forgiveness Ode”
• Kevin Young, “Lime Light Blues”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Acknowledgments
• About Robert Pinsky and David Lehman
• Copyright