Former Poet Laureate Dove has chosen the best poems of the year from a wide range of literary magazines and journals, presenting works by W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton, Susan Mitchell, John Ashbery, and others. The poets comment about their work. Lehman writes the Foreword.

CONTENTS

Foreword by David Lehman

Introduction by Rita Dove

Kim Addonizio, "Virgin Spring"

Pamela Alexander, "Semiotics"

A. R. Ammons, "Shot Glass"

Julianna Baggott, "Mary Todd on Her Deathbed"

Erin Belieu, "Choose Your Garden"

Richard Blanco, "Mango, Number 61"

Janet Bowdan, "The Year"

Grace Butcher, "Crow Is Walking"

Lucille Clifton, "Signs"

Billy Collins, "Man Listening to Disc"

Jim Daniels, "Between Periods"

Linh Dinh, "The Most Beautiful Word"

Gregory Djanikian, "Immigrant Picnic"

Denise Duhamel, "Incest Taboo"

Christopher Edgar, "Birthday"

Karl Elder, "Alpha Images"

Lynn Emanuel, "Walt. I Salute You!"

B. H. Fairchild, "Mrs. Hill"

Charles Fort, "We Did Not Fear the Father"

Frank X. Gaspar, "Seven Roses"

Elton Glaser, "And in the Afternoons I Botanized"

Ray Gonzalez, "For the Other World"

Jennifer Grotz, "The Last Living Castrato"

Thom Gunn, "The Dump"

Mark Halliday, "Before"

Barbara Hamby, "Ode to the Lost Luggage Warehouse at the Rome Airport"

Forrest Hamer, "Goldsboro Narratives"

Brenda Hillman, "Air for Mercury"

Marsha Janson, "Considering the Demise of Everything"

Mark Jarman, "Epistle"

Patricia Spears Jones, "Ghosts"

Rodney Jones, "Plea for Forgiveness"

Donald Justice, "Ralph: A Love Story"

Olena Kalytiak Davis, "Six Apologies, Lord"

David Kirby, "At the Grave of Harold Goldstein"

Carolyn Kizer, "The Oration"

Lynne Knight, "The Muse of the Actual"

Yusef Komunyakaa, "The Goddess of Quotas Laments"

Thomas Lux, "Henry Clay's Mouth"

Lynne McMahon, "We Take Our Children to Ireland"

W. S. Merwin, "The Hours of Darkness"

Susan Mitchell, "Lost Parrot"

Jean Nordhaus, "Aunt Lily and Frederick the Great"

Mary Oliver, "Work"

Michael Palmer, "I Do Not"

Paul Perry, "Paris"

Carl Phillips, "'All art...'"

Robert Pinsky, "Samurai Song"

Donald Platt, "History & Bikinis"

Stanley Plumly, "Kunitz Tending Roses"

Lawrence Raab, "Permanence"

Thomas Rabbitt, "The Beach at Falmouth Heights, Summer, 1952"

Mary Jo Salter, "Au Pair"

Rebecca Seiferle, "Welcome to Ithaca"

Brenda Shaughnessy, "Postfeminism"

Laurie Sheck, "from Black Series"

Reginald Shepherd, "Semantics at Four P.M."

Richard Siken, "The Dislocated Room"

Cathy Song, "Mother of Us All"

Gary Soto, "Chit-Chat with the Junior League Women"

Gabriel Spera, "In a Field Outside the Town"

A. E. Stallings, "Asphodel"

Susan Stewart, "Wings"

Adrienne Su, "The English Canon"

Pamela Sutton, "There Is a Lake of Ice on the Moon"

Dorothea Tanning, "No Palms"

Natasha Trethewey, "Limen"

Quincy Troupe, "Song"

Reetika Vazirani, "Rahim Multani"

Paul Violi, "As I Was Telling David and Alexandra Kelley"

Derek Walcott, "Pissarro at Dusk"

Richard Wilbur, "Fabrications"

Susan Wood, "Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair"

John You, "Borrowed Love Poems"

Dean Young, "The Infirmament"

Contributors' Notes and Comments

Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published

Acknowledgments

The Best American Poetry of the Twentieth Century

David Lehman, the series editor of The Best American Poetry, edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His books of poetry include The Morning Line, When a Woman Loves a Man, and The Daily Mirror. The most recent of his many nonfiction books is The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.