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. He has written such nonfiction books as Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Contents

Foreword by David Lehman

Introduction by Robert Creeley

Rae Armantrout, "Up to Speed"

John Ashbery, "The Pearl Fishers"

Amiri Baraka, "The Golgotha Local"

Charles Bernstein, "122"

Anselm Berrigan, from Zero Star Hotel

Frank Bidart, "Injunction"

Jenny Boully, "The Body"

T. Alan Broughton, "Ballad of the Comely Woman"

Michael Burkard, "What I Threw into the Grave"

Anne Carson, "Opposed Glimpse of Alice James, Garth James, Henry James, Robertson James and William James"

Elizabeth Biller Chapman, "On the Screened Porch"

Tom Clark, "Lullaby for Cuckoo"

Peter Cooley, "Corpus Delicti"

Clark Coolidge, "Traced Red Dot"

Ruth Danon, "Long after (Mallarmé),"

Diane di Prima, "Midsummer"

Theodore Enslin, "Moon Cornering"

Elaine Equi, "O Patriarchy"

Clayton Eshleman, "Animals out of the Snow"

Norman Finkelstein, "Drones and Chants"

Jeffrey Franklin, "To a Student Who Reads 'The Second Coming' as Sexual Autobiography"

Benjamin Friedlander, "Independence Day"

Gene Frumkin, "Surreal Love Life"

Forrest Gander, "Carried Across"

Peter Gizzi, "Beginning with a Phrase from Simone Weil"

Louise Gluck, "Reunion"

Albert Goldbarth, "The Gold Star"

Donald Hall, "Affirmation"

Michael S. Harper, "TCAT serenade: 4 4 98 (New Haven)"

Everett Hoagland, "you: should be shoo be"

Fanny Howe, "9-11-01"

Ronald Johnson, "Poem" ("across dark stream")

Maxine Kumin, "Flying"

Bill Kushner, "Great"

Joseph Lease, "'Broken World' (For James Assatly)"

Timothy Liu, "Felix Culpa"

Nathaniel Mackey, "On Antiphon Island"

Jackson Mac Low, "And Even You Elephants? (Stein 139/Titles 35)"

Steve Malmude, "Perfect Front Door"

Sarah Manguso, "Address to Winnie in Paris"

Harry Mathews, "Butter & Eggs"

Duncan McNaughton, "The quarry (1-13)"

W. S. Merwin, "To My Father's Houses"

Philip Metres, "Ashberries: Letters"

Mông-Lan, "Trail"

Jennifer Moxley, "Behind the Orbits"

Eileen Myles, "Sympathy"

Maggie Nelson, "Sunday Night"

Charles North, "Sonnet"

Alice Notley, "Haunt"

D. Nurkse, "Snapshot from Niagara"

Sharon Olds, "Frontis Nulla Fides"

George Oppen, "Twenty-six Fragments"

Jena Osman, "Starred Together"

Carl Phillips, "Fretwork"

Pam Rehm, "'A roof is no guarantee...'"

Adrienne Rich, "Ends of the Earth"

Corinne Robins, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"

Elizabeth Robinson, "Tenets of Roots and Trouble"

Ira Sadoff, "Self-Portrait with Critic"

Hugh Seidman, "I Do Not Know Myself"

Reginald Shepherd, "You Also, Nightingale"

Ron Silliman, "For Larry Eigner, Silent"

Dale Smith, "Poem after Haniel Long"

Gustaf Sobin, "In Way of Introduction"

Juliana Spahr, "Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours"

John Taggart, "Call"

Sam Truitt, from Raton Rex, Part I

Jean Valentine, "Do flies remember us"

Lewis Warsh, "Eye Contact"

Claire Nicolas White, "Return to Saint Odilienberg, Easter 2000"

Nathan Whiting, "In Charge"

Dara Wier, "Illumined with the Light of Fitfully Burning Censers"

Charles Wright, "Nostalgia II"

John Yau, "A Sheath of Pleasant Voices"

Contributors' Notes and Comments

Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published

Acknowledgments