The Best American Poetry 2011

Series Editor David Lehman

David Lehman, Kevin Young, David Lehman, Kevin Young

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439181515
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

  The latest installment of the yearly anthology of contemporary American poetry that has achieved brand-name status in the literary world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Back Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Elizabeth Alexander, “Rally”
• Chapter 2: Sherman Alexie, “Valediction”
• Chapter 3: Rae Armantrout, “Soft Money”
• Chapter 4: John Ashbery, “Postlude and Prequel”
• Chapter 5: Julianna Baggott, “To My Lover, Concerning the Yird-Swine”
• Chapter 6: Erin Belieu, “When at a Certain Party in NYC”
• Chapter 7: Cara Benson, “Banking”
• Chapter 8: Jaswinder Bolina, “Mine Is the First Rodeo, Mine Is the Last Accolade”
• Chapter 9: Catherine Bowman, “The Sink”
• Chapter 10: Turner Cassity, “Off the Nollendorfplatz”
• Chapter 11: Michael Cirelli, “Dead Ass”
• Chapter 12: Billy Collins, “Here and There”
• Chapter 13: Olena Kalytiak Davis, Three Sonnets [“Sonnet (division),” “Sonnet (motion),” “Sonnet (silenced)”]
• Chapter 14: Matthew Dickman, “Coffee”
• Chapter 15: Michael Dickman, “From the Lives of My Friends”
• Chapter 16: Denise Duhamel, “My Strip Club”
• Chapter 17: Cornelius Eady, “Emmett Till’s Glass-Top Casket”
• Chapter 18: Jill Alexander Essbaum, “Stays”
• Chapter 19: Alan Feldman, “In November”
• Chapter 20: Farrah Field, From “The Amy Poems” (“Amy Survives Another Apocalypse” and “You’re Really Starting to Suck, Amy”)
• Chapter 21: Carolyn Forché, “Morning on the Island”
• Chapter 22: Beckian Fritz Goldberg, “Everything Is Nervous”
• Chapter 23: Benjamin S. Grossberg, “The Space Traveler Talks Frankly about Desire”
• Chapter 24: Jennifer Grotz, “Poppies”
• Chapter 25: Robert Hass, “August Notebook: A Death”
• Chapter 26: Terrance Hayes, “Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy”
• Chapter 27: K. A. Hays, “Just As, After a Point, Job Cried Out”
• Chapter 28: Bob Hicok, “Having Intended to Merely Pick on an Oil Company, the Poem Goes Awry”
• Chapter 29: Jane Hirshfield, “The Cloudy Vase”
• Chapter 30: Paul Hoover, “God’s Promises”
• Chapter 31: Andrew Hudgins, “The Funeral Sermon”
• Chapter 32: Major Jackson, From Holding Company (“Bereft,” “Lying,” “The Giant Swing Ending in a Split,” “Narcissus”)
• Chapter 33: Allison Joseph, “Notebooks”
• Chapter 34: L. S. Klatt, “Andrew Wyeth, Painter, Dies at 91”
• Chapter 35: Jennifer Knox, “Kiri Te Kanawa Singing ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’”
• Chapter 36: Yusef Komunyakaa, “A Voice on an Answering Machine”
• Chapter 37: James Longenbach, “Snow”
• Chapter 38: Bridget Lowe, “The Pilgrim Is Bridled and Bespectacled”
• Chapter 39: Maurice Manning, “The Complaint against Roney Laswell’s Rooster”
• Chapter 40: Morton Marcus, “Pears”
• Chapter 41: Jill McDonough, “Dear Gaybashers”
• Chapter 42: Erika Meitner, “Elegy with Construction Sounds, Water, Fish”
• Chapter 43: Paul Muldoon, “The Side Project”
• Chapter 44: Jude Nutter, “Word”
• Chapter 45: Jeni Olin, “Pillow Talk”
• Chapter 46: Eric Pankey, “Cogitatio Mortis”
• Chapter 47: Alan Michael Parker, “Family Math”
• Chapter 48: Catherine Pierce, “Postcards from Her Alternate Lives”
• Chapter 49: Robert Pinsky, “Horn”
• Chapter 50: Katha Pollitt, “Angels”
• Chapter 51: D. A. Powell, “Bugcatching at Twilight”
• Chapter 52: Gretchen Steele Pratt, “To my father on the anniversary of his death”
• Chapter 53: James Richardson, “Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0”
• Chapter 54: Anne Marie Rooney, “What my heart is turning”
• Chapter 55: Mary Ruefle, “Provenance”
• Chapter 56: David St. John, “Ghost Aurora”
• Chapter 57: Mary Jo Salter, “The Afterlife”
• Chapter 58: James Schuyler, “The Smallest”
• Chapter 59: Charles Simic, “Nineteen Thirty-Eight”
• Chapter 60: Matthew Buckley Smith, “Nowhere”
• Chapter 61: Patricia Smith, “Motown Crown”
• Chapter 62: Gerald Stern, “Dream IV”
• Chapter 63: Bianca Stone, “Pantoum for the Imperceptible”
• Chapter 64: Mark Strand, “The Poem of the Spanish Poet”
• Chapter 65: Mary Jo Thompson, “Thirteen Months”
• Chapter 66: Natasha Trethewey, “Elegy”
• Chapter 67: Lee Upton, “Drunk at a Party”
• Chapter 68: David Wagoner, “Thoreau and the Lightning”
• Chapter 69: Rosanna Warren, “The Latch”
• Chapter 70: Rachel Wetzsteon, “Time Pieces”
• Chapter 71: Richard Wilbur, “Ecclesiastes II:I”
• Chapter 72: C. K. Williams, “A Hundred Bones”
• Chapter 73: David Wojahn, “Mix Tape to Be Brought to Her in Rehab”
• Chapter 74: Charles Wright, “Toadstools”
• Chapter 75: Stephen Yenser, “Cycladic Idyll: An Apologia”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• Footnote