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