Anthology of Modern American Poetry Volume 1

Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Second Edition, contains poems by more than ninety American poets born before 1910, including many who have not been anthologized before. Editor Cary Nelson introduces students to a diverse selection of vital poetry, presenting both canonical and lesser-known selections by women, minority, Native American, and progressive writers only rediscovered in the past two decades. In addition to offering the most detailed annotations available in an anthology of this type and selected poems in the beautifully illustrated form in which they first appeared, this is also the first collection to give full treatment to American long poems and poem sequences.

Ideal for courses in Modern American Poetry, American Literature, Modern Poetry, and American Studies, Anthology of Modern American Poetry introduces students our diverse poetic heritage.

Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author or editor of 28 books, including Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and The Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945 (1989), which helped revolutionize the study of American poetry.

Volume 1

Topical Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
---One's Self I Sing
---I Hear America Singing
---As Adam Early in the Morning
---For You O Democracy
---I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
---A Glimpse
---Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
---Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

TOO-QUA-STEE/DEWITT CLINTON DUNCAN (1829-1909)
---The White Man's Burden

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)
---49 (I never lost as much but twice)
---258 There's a certain Slant of light,)
---280 (I felt a Funeral, in my Brain)
---303 (The Soul selects her own Society)
---341 (After great pain, a formal feeling comes--)
---435 (Much madness is divinest sense)
---465 (I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--)
---508 (I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs)
---520 (I started Early--Took my Dog--)
---585 (I like to see it lap the Miles--)
---601 (A still--Volcano--Life--)
---613 (They shut me up in Prose)
---657 (I dwell in Possibility--)
---712 (Because I could not stop for Death)
---754 (My Life had stood----a Loaded Gun--)
---1072 Title divine--is mine!)
---1129 (Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--)
---1705 (Volcanoes be in Sicily)

EDWIN MARKHAM (1852-1940)
---The Man With the Hoe
---A Look Into the Gulf
---Outwitted

SADAKICHI HARTMANN (1867-1944)
---Cyanogen Seas Are Surging
---Tanka I
---Tanka III

EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868-1950)
---Lucinda Matlock
---Petit, the Poet
---Seth Compton
---Trainor, the Druggist
---Minerva Jones
---Cleanthus Trilling

W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868-1963)
---The Song of the Smoke

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935)
---The House on the Hill
---Richard Cory
---The Clerks
---Miniver Cheevy
---The Mill
---Mr. Flood's Party
---The Tree in Pamela's Garden
---The Dark Hills

STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)
---In the Desert
---Many Red Devils Ran from My Heart
---A Newspaper Is a Collection of Half-Injustices
---Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War Is Kind
---Do not weep, babe, for war is kind

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938)
---O Black and Unknown Bards
---The Creation
---The White Witch
---My City

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (1872-1906)
---We Wear the Mask
---When Malindy Sings
---Sympathy
---The Haunted Oak

ALEXANDER POSEY (1873-1908)
---The Decree
---On the Capture and Imprisonment of Crazy Snake, January 1901
---The Fall of the Redskin

LOLA RIDGE (1873-1941)
---Stone Face
---from Ice Heart

AMY LOWELL (1874-1925)
---A Fixed Idea
---from Sea-Blue and Blood-Red
---------- The Mediterranean
---from Spring Day
---------- Midday and Afternoon
---Thompson's Lunch Room--Grand Central Station
---The Taxi
---September, 1918
---The Letter
---Venus Transiens
---Madonna of the Evening Flowers
---The Weather-Cock Points South
---Opal
---Wakefulness
---Grotesque`---------------------------------The Sisters

GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946)
---Susie Asado
---Patriarchal Poetry

ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
---The Mill City
---The Parlor Joke
---In Hardwood Groves
---Mending Wall
---Home Burial
---After Apple-Picking
---The Wood-Pile
---The Road Not Taken
---Birches
---The Death of the Hired Man
---The Vanishing Red
---Putting in the Seed
---Out, Out
---Hyla Brook
---The Oven Bird
---An Old Man's Winter Night
---The Hill Wife
---Fire and Ice
---Good-By and Keep Cold
---The Need of Being Versed In Country Things
---Design
---The Witch of Coös
---Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
----------Nothing Gold Can Stay
----------Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
---Provide, Provide
---Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same
---The Gift Outright

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON (1875-1935)
---I Sit and Sew

CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967)
---Chicago
---Subway
---Muckers
---Child of the Romans
---Nigger
---Buttons
---Planked Whitefish
---Cool Tombs
---Grass
---Fog
---Gargoyle
---Elizabeth Umpstead
---Man, The Man-Hunter
---Two Humpties

VACHEL LINDSAY (1879-1931)
---The Congo
---The Child-heart in the Mountains
---Celestial Flowers of Glacier Park
---The Virginians Are Coming Again
---Words About An Ancient Queen

WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)
---Domination of Black
---Sea Surface Full of Clouds
---Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
---Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
---Floral Decoration for Bananas
---Anecdote of the Jar
---Disillusionment of Ten O'clock
---A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
---The Snow Man
---The Emperor of Ice-Cream
---Peter Quince at the Clavier
---Sunday Morning
---The Death of a Soldier
---The Idea of Order at Key West
---Mozart, 1935
---A Postcard from the Volcano
---Study of Two Pears
---Of Modern Poetry
---The Course of a Particular
---Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
---The Plain Sense of Things
---As You Leave the Room
---A Clear Day and No Memories
---Of Mere Being

ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ (1880-1958)
---The Black Finger
---Tenebris
---A Mona Lisa
---Fragment

GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON (1880-1966)
---The Heart of a Woman
---Common Dust
---Motherhood
---My Little Dreams

MINA LOY (1882-1966)
---(There is No Life or Death)
---O Hell
---Songs to Joannes

ANNE SPENCER (1882-1975)
---White Things
---Lady, Lady
---(God never planted a garden)
---Dunbar

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)
---The Young Housewife
---Portrait of a Lady
---Queen-Anne's-Lace
---The Widow's Lament in Springtime
---The Great Figure
---Spring and All
---To Elsie
---The Red Wheelbarrow
---Young Sycamore
---The Descent of Winter
---This is Just to Say
---Proletarian Portrait
---The Yachts
---The Dance
---The Descent
---Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, Book I
---Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

ARSENIUS CHALECO (1884-1939)
---The Indian Requiem

SARA TEASDALE (1884-1933)
---I Shall Not Care
---Enough
---Spring in the Naugatuck Valley
---There Will Come Soft Rains
---The Unchanging

ELINOR WYLIE (1885-1928)
---The Eagle and the Mole
---August
---Sanctuary
---Sonnet
---Self-Portrait
---Let No Charitable Hope

EZRA POUND (1885-1972)
---A Pact
---In a Station of the Metro
---The Rest
---Portrait d'une Femme
---The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
---from THE CANTOS:
------I (And then went down to the ship)
------IX (One year floods rose)
------XLV (With Usura)
------LXXXI (Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom)
------CXVI (Came Neptunus)
------Notes for CXVII (I have tried to write paradise)

H.D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886-1961)
---The Pool
---Oread
---Mid-day
---Sea Rose
---Garden
---The Helmsman
---Eurydice
---Helen
---from The Walls Do Not Fall
------1
------6
------39

ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887-1962)
---Shine, Perishing Republic
---Fawn's Foster-Mother
---Hurt Hawks
---November Surf
---The Purse-Seine
---Fantasy
---Cassandra
---Vulture
----------Birds and Fishes
---Fire on the Hills
---Antrim
---(I saw a regiment of soldiers)
---An Extinct Vertebrate
---(I walk on my cliff)
---The Epic Stars

MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)
---Black Earth
---Poetry
----------An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish
---The Fish
----------Sojourn in the Whale
---A Graveyard
---Silence
---Peter
---Marriage
---An Octopus
---No Swan So Fine
---The Pangolin
---Bird-Witted
---The Paper Nautilus
---Spenser's Ireland

T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)
---The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
---Preludes
---Gerontion
---The Waste Land
---The Hollow Men
---Journey of the Magi
---from Four Quartets:
------Burnt Norton

JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974)
---Sonnets of a Selfish Lover
---Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter

CLAUDE McKAY (1889-1948)
---The Harlem Dancer
---To The White Fiends
---If We Must Die
---The Lynching
---The Tropics in New York
---The White City
---America
---Outcast
---Mulatto
---The Negro's Tragedy
---Look Within
---Tiger

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950)
---First Fig
---Second Fig
---Recuerdo
---Grown-Up
---Spring
---I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed
---Love is not blind
---Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
---Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree
---Justice Denied in Massachusetts
---Say That We Saw Spain Die

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH (1892-1982)
---Ars Poetica
---The Silent Slain
---The End of the World

DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
---Unfortunate Coincidence
---Résumé
---One Perfect Rose
---Thomas Carlyle
---Walter Savage Landor
---News Item
---The Dark Girl's Rhyme

GENEVIEVE TAGGARD (1894-1948)
---Everyday Alchemy
---With Child
---Up State----Depression Summer
---Mill Town
---Ode in Time of Crisis
---To the Negro People
---To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962)
---Thy fingers make early flowers of
---in Just-
---O sweet spontaneous
---Buffalo Bill's
---Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal
---"next to of course god america i
---my sweet old etcetera
---i sing of Olaf glad and big
---Space being(don't forget to remember)Curved
---r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
---anyone lived in a pretty how town

JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967)
---from Cane:
------Reapers
------November Cotton Flower
------Portrait in Georgia
------Her Lips Are Copper Wire

CHARLES REZNIKOFF (1894-1976)
---April
---Aphrodite Vraina
---(On Brooklyn Bridge, I Saw a Man Drop Dead)
---(I Walked through the Lonely Marsh)
---from Testimony: The United States (1885-1915):
------Negroes
---from Holocaust:
------Massacres

HERMAN SPECTOR (1895-1959)
---Wiseguy Type

V. J. JEROME (1896-1965)
---A Negro Mother to Her Child

JOHN WHEELWRIGHT (1897-1940)
---Plantation Drouth
---Cross Questions

JOSEPH FREEMAN (1897-1965)
---Our age has Caesars

LUCIA TRENT (1897-1977)
---Breed, Women, Breed
---Black Men
---Parade the Narrow Turrets

LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970)
---Medusa
---The Crows
---Women
---The Alchemist
---The Dragonfly
---Cassandra

RUTH MARGARET MUSKRAT (1897-1982)
---Songs of the Spavinaw
---Sentenced

HARRY CROSBY (1898-1929)
---Photoheliograph (For Lady A.)
---Pharmacie Du Soleil
---Tattoo
---from Short Introduction to the Word

HART CRANE (1899-1932)
---October-November
---Black Tambourine
---Chaplinesque
----------Episode of Hands
----------Porphyro in Akron
---Voyages I
---from The Bridge
------Poem: to Brooklyn Bridge
--------------------I Ave Maria
--------------------from II (Powhatan's Daughter): The River
--------------------IV Cape Hatteras
--------------------from V (Three Songs): Southern Cross
--------------------VI Quaker Hill
--------------------VIII Atlantis
---The Mango Tree

LYNN RIGGS (1899-1954)
---The Corrosive Season
---Footprints

ALLEN TATE (1899-1979)
---Ode to the Confederate Dead

MELVIN B. TOLSON (1900?-1966)
---Dark Symphony
---Libretto for the Republic of Liberia

YVOR WINTERS (1900-1968)
---Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
---Vacant Lot

STERLING A. BROWN (1901-1989)
---Southern Road
---Scotty Has His Say
---Memphis Blues
---Slim in Atlanta
---Slim in Hell
---Rent Day Blues
---Old Lem
---Sharecroppers
---Southern Cop
---Choices

LAURA (RIDING) JACKSON (1901-1991)
---Helen's Burning
---The Wind Suffers
---Elegy in a Spider's Web
---The Map of Places

KENNETH FEARING (1902-1961)
---Dear Beatrice Fairfax
---$2.50
---Dirge
---Denouement

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)
---Question
---Negro
---The Negro Speaks of Rivers
---The Weary Blues
---The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)
---To the Dark Mercedes of "El Palacio de Amor"
---Mulatto
---Justice
---Fire
---White Shadows
---Christ in Alabama
---Three Songs About Lynching:
------Silhouette
------Flight
------Lynching Song
---Come to the Waldorf-Astoria
---Goodbye Christ
---Ballad of Roosevelt
---Park Bench
---Let America Be America Again
---Letter from Spain
---The Bitter River
---Ku Klux
---Shakespeare in Harlem
---Madam and the Phone Bill
---Ballad of the Landlord
---Harlem
---Late Corner
---Dinner Guest: Me
---The Backlash Blues
---Bombings in Dixie

ARNA BONTEMPS (1902-1973)
---A Black Man Talks of Reaping
---Southern Mansion
---Miracles

GWENDOLYN BENNETT (1902-1981)
---To a Dark Girl
---Heritage
---Street Lamps in Early Spring
---Dirge for a Free Spirit
---I Build America
---(Rapacious women who sit on steps at night)

COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946)
---Christ Recrucified
----------In Praise of Boys
---Incident
---For a Lady I Know
---Yet Do I Marvel
---Near White
---Tableau
---Heritage
---From the Dark Tower

LORINE NIEDECKER (1903-1970)
---Well, Spring Overflows the Land
---Paean to Place
---Poet's work

KAY BOYLE (1903-1993)
---A Communication to Nancy Cunard

CARL RAKOSI (1903-2004)
---The Menage

AQUA LALUAH (1904-1950)
---The Serving Girl
---Lullaby

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY (1904-1978)
---To My Wash Stand
---"Mantis"
---A Song for the Year's End
---Because Tarzan Triumphs (from Light)
---Non Ti Fidar

JOHN BEECHER (1904-1980)
---Report to the Stockholders
---Beaufort Tides
---Engagement at the Salt Fork
---A Veteran's Day of Recollection

KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982)
---The Love Poems of Marichiko

ROBERT PENN WARREN (1905-1989)
---Genealogy
---Bearded Oaks
---Mother Makes the Biscuits
---Chain Saw at Dawn in Vermont in Time of Drouth
---Natural History
---Evening Hawk
---Heart of Autumn

STANLEY KUNITZ (1905-2006)
---The Wellfleet Whale
---The Snakes of September
---Day of Foreboding
---Touch Me

JOSEPH KALAR (1906-1972)
---Papermill
---Prosperity Blues: Minnesota

W. H. AUDEN (1907-1973)
---Musée des Beaux Arts
---In Memory of W. B. Yeats
---September 1, 1939
---The Shield of Achilles

THEODORE ROETHKE (1908-1963)
---Cuttings
---Cuttings (later)
---Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze
---from The Lost Son:
------The Flight
---My Papa's Waltz
---I Knew a Woman
---North American Sequence:
------The Longing
------Meditation at Oyster River
------Journey to the Interior
------The Long Waters
------The Far Field
------The Rose

GEORGE OPPEN (1908-1984)
---Image of the Engine
---Survival: Infantry
---In Alsace
---Exodus

EDWIN ROLFE (1909-1954)
---Asbestos
---Season of Death
---First Love
---Elegia
---After Tu Fu (A.D. 713-770)
---Now the Fog
---A Letter to the Denouncers
---Are You Now or Have You Ever Been
---A Poem to Delight My Friends Who Laugh at Science-Fiction
---In Praise Of
---June 19,1953
---Pastoral--1954
---Little Ballad for Americans----1954

SOL FUNAROFF (1911-1942)
---Unemployed: 2 A.M.
---The Man At The Factory Gate
----------The Bull in the Olive Field
---Goin Mah Own Road

MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980)
---The Book of the Dead
---The Minotaur
---(To be a Jew in the Twentieth century)
---Rite
---The Poem As Mask
---Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)
---Poem White Page/ White Page Poem

ANGEL ISLAND: POEMS BY CHINESE IMMIGRANTS (1910-1940)
---Instead of remaining a citizen of China
---The seascape, resembling lichen, undulates endlessly
---Putting away my books and my inkstone
---Drifting like duckweed
---I write this poem to let my dear wife know
---The silver-red shirt is half covered with dust
---Over a hundred poems are on the walls
---What have I done that I must sit in jail?
---Unoccupied, I opened the window of the wooden building
---Angel Island's three-beamed building shields only the body
---Twice I have crossed the blue ocean
---The dragon out of water is humiliated by ants
---The Flowery Flag will be taken down for ours to hoist
---I advise you never to sneak across the border for America
---The blue ocean surrounds a lone mountain
---America has power, but not justice

WWI in Britain and Ireland:

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939)
---An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
---The Second Coming

EDWARD THOMAS (1878-1917)
---Rain
---February Afternoon

SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886-1967)
---The Rear Guard
---Dreamers
---Repression of War Experience
---The General

ISAAC ROSENBERG (1890-1918)
---Break of Day in the Trenches
---Dead Man's Dump

WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918)
---Anthem for Doomed Youth
---Dulce et Decorum Est

GRAPHIC INTERPRETATIONS:

EDWIN MARKHAM
---The Man With the Hoe

VACHEL LINDSAY
---Drink for Sale
---The Virginians Are Coming Again

LANGSTON HUGHES
---Christ in Alabama
---Come to the Waldorf-Astoria

Volume 2

MARY CORNELIA HARTSHORNE (c. 1910-)
---Fallen Leaves
---Hills of Doon
---Wind in Mexico

CHARLES HENRI FORD (1910-2002)
---Plaint
---Flag of Ecstasy
---Pastoral for Pavlik

CHARLES OLSON (1910-1970)
---Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele
---Maximus, to himself
---Cole's Island

ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)
---The Fish
---The Man-Moth
---At the Fishhouses
---Filling Station
---Questions of Travel
---The Armadillo
---In the Waiting Room
---Pink Dog
---Crusoe in England
---One Art

WILLIAM EVERSON (1912-1994)
---The Making of the Cross
---A Canticle to the Waterbirds

TILLIE LERNER OLSEN (1912-2007)
---I Want You Women Up North To Know

ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980)
---Middle Passage
---Runagate Runagate
---A Letter from Phillis Wheatley
---Those Winter Sundays
---Night, Death, Mississippi
---Aunt Jemima of the Ocean Waves
------ from Elegies for Paradise Valley
----------No. 1
---The Dogwood Trees
---O Daedalus, Fly Away Home

WELDON KEES (1914-1955)
---June 1940
---Travels in North America

RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965)
---The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
---A Front
---Losses
---Second Air Force
---Protocols

JAPANESE AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMP HAIKU (1942-1944)
---Shiho Okamoto (Being arrested--)
---Sadayo Taniguchi (Hand-cuffed and taken away)
---Kyotaro Komuro (Lingering summer heat--)
---Taro Katay, (Shouldering)
---Komuro (Passed guard tower)
---Okamoto (In the shade of summer sun)
---Shonan Suzuki (Withered grass on ground)
---Hakuro Wada (Young grass red and shriveled)
---Hyakuissei Okamoto (Dandelion has bloomed)
---Shizuku Uyemaruko (On certain days)
---Wada (Released seagull)
---Ryokuin Matsui (Sprinkling water outside)
---Komuro (Want to be with children)
---Wada (Even the croaking of frogs)
---Hangetsu Tsunekawa (Sentry at main gate)
---Shokoshi Saga (Thin shadow of tule reed)
---Tokuji Hirai (Looking at summer moon)
---Suzuki (Moon shadows on internment camp)
---Hirai (Early moon has set)
---Suiko Matsushita (Rain shower from mountain)
---Kyokusui (Thorns of the iron fence)
---Neiji Ozawa (Desert rain falling)
---Senbinshi Takaoka (Frosty morning)
---Oshio (Stepping through snow)
---Jyosha Yamada (Black clouds instantly shroud)
---Takaoka (Winter wind)
---Hekisamei Matsuda (Doll without a head)
---Sei Sagara (Suddenly awakened)
---Hyakuissei Okamoto (Jeep patrolling slowly)
---Shizuku Uyemaruko (Grieving within)
---Okamoto (In the sage brush)
---Matsushita (Oh shells--)

JOHN BERRYMAN (1914-1972)
---from The Dream Songs
------1 Huffy Henry
------4 Filling her compact & delicious body
------5 Henry sats
------14 Life, friends
------22 Of 1826
------29 There sat down, once
------40 I'm scared a lonely
------45 He stared at ruin
------46 I am, outside
------55 Peter's not friendly
------76 Henry's Confession
------382 At Henry's bier
------384 The marker slants

WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914-1993)
---Traveling Through the Dark
---At the Bomb Testing Site
---At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border
---The Indian Cave Jerry Ramsey Found

DUDLEY RANDALL (1914-2000)
---Ballad of Birmingham
---A Different Image

JOY DAVIDMAN (1915-1960)
---This Woman
---For The Nazis

MARGARET WALKER (1915-1998)
---For My People

RUTH STONE (1915-2011)
---In an Iridescent Time
---I Have Three Daughters
---Pokeberries
---American Milk
---From the Arboretum
---Drought in the Lower Fields
---Some Things You'll Need to Know/ Before You Join the Union

THOMAS McGRATH (1916-1990)
---Deep South
---Crash Report
---First Book of Genesis According to the Diplomats
---Ars Poetica: Or: Who Lives in the Ivory Tower?
---A Little Song About Charity
---Against the False Magicians
---After the Beat Generation
---Ode for the American Dead in Asia
---Poem at the Winter Solstice

ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977)
---Inauguration Day: January 1953
---A Mad Negro Soldier Confined at Munich
---Commander Lowell
---"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
---Man and Wife
---Memories of West Street and Lepke
---Skunk Hour
---For the Union Dead
---The Mouth of the Hudson
---July in Washington
---The March I
---The March II
---Central Park
---Epilogue

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000)
---A song in the front yard
---Of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery
---Gay Chaps at the Bar
---We Real Cool
---The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
---The Blackstone Rangers
---Malcolm X
---Young Afrikans
---The Boy Died in My Alley
---To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals
---To the Diaspora

WILLIAM BRONK (1918-1999)
---At Tikal
---The Mayan Glyphs Unread
---I Thought It Was Harry
---Where It Ends
---Left Alone

ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988)
---Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
---My Mother Would Be a Falconress
---The Torso (Passages 18)
---Up Rising (Passages 25)

BARBARA GUEST (1920-2006)
---from Quilts
------ "Couch of Space"
---Words
---Twilight Polka Dots

AARON KRAMER (1921-1997)
---Denmark Vesey

RICHARD WILBUR (b. 1921)
---The Pardon
---A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra
---Beasts
---Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
---Advice to a Prophet
---Children of Darkness

MONA VAN DUYN (1921-2004)
---Toward a Definition of Marriage

JACK KEROUAC (1922-1969)
---The Perfect Love of Mind Essence
--- Haiku

JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997)
---The Sheep Child
---Falling

DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-1997)
---The Ache of Marriage
---Olga Poems
---What Were They Like?
---Life at War

ANTHONY HECHT (1923-2004)
---A Hill
---"More Light! More Light!"
---The Book of Yolek

BOB KAUFMAN (1925-1986)
---The Biggest Fisherman
---Crootey Songo
---No More Jazz at Alcatraz
---from Jail Poems, Nos. 1-3

MAXINE KUMIN (b. 1925)
---Voices from Kansas
---Saga
---Oblivion
---Pantoum, With Swan
---With William Meredith in Bulgaria

DONALD JUSTICE (1925-2004)
---An Old Fashioned Devil
---The Wall
---Early Poems
---Presences
---Absences

PAUL BLACKBURN (1926-1971)
---At the Crossroad
---At the Well

FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966)
---from Alma
---Poem (The eager note on my door)
---A Step Away From Them
---The Day Lady Died
---Why I Am Not a Painter
---A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
---On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Museum of Modern Art
---Thinking of James Dean

JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995)
---An Urban Convalescence
---The Broken Home
---Willowware Cup
---Lost in Translation

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997)
---Love Poem on Theme By Whitman
---Howl
---A Supermarket in California
---Who to Be Kind To
---Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans overflowing
---Father Death Blues
---Sphincter

ROBERT CREELEY (1926-2005)
---After Lorca
---I Know a Man
---The Flower
---For Love
---America
---Age

ROBERT BLY (b. 1926)
---Counting Small-Boned Bodies
---Hearing Gary Snyder Read

A.R. AMMONS (1926-2001)
---Corsons Inlet
---Gravelly Run
---Coon Song

JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980)
---Saint Judas
---Beginning
---Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
---Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
---A Blessing
---A Centenary Ode: Inscribed to Little Crow, Leader of the Sioux Rebellion in Minnesota, 1862

JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927)
---"They Dream Only of America"
---Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
---Mixed Feelings
---Street Musicians
---Syringa
---Daffy Duck in Hollywood
---Paradoxes and Oxymorons
---The Problem of Anxiety
---Dull Mauve
---A Kind of Chill
---Spooks Run Wild
---Marine Shadow
---Words to That Effect

GALWAY KINNELL (b. 1927)
---The Porcupine
---The Bear
---The Vow

W.S. MERWIN (b. 1927)
---The Drunk in the Furnace
---It Is March
---Caesar
---The Room
---December Among the Vanished
---For the Anniversary of My Death
---When The War Is Over
---The Asians Dying
---For a Coming Extinction
---Looking For Mushrooms at Sunrise
---The Gardens of Zuni
---Beginning
---The Horse
---Sun and Rain
---Berryman
---Daylight
---The Name of the Air
---Far Along in the Story
---Worn Words

ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974)
---Her Kind
---The Truth the Dead Know
---And One for My Dame
---Jesus Asleep
---Jesus Raises up the Harlot
---The Room of My Life

PHILIP LEVINE (b. 1928)
---For Fran
---The Horse
---Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
---Belle Isle, 1949
---They Feed They Lion
---Francisco, I'll Bring You Red Carnations
---Fear and Fame
---On the Meeting of García Lorca and Hart Crane

ADRIENNE RICH (1929-2012)
---Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
---From Shooting Script
---Trying to Talk With a Man
---Diving into the Wreck
---Twenty-One Love Poems
---Power
---from An Atlas of the Difficult World
------XIII. (Dedications) I know you are reading this poem
---Behind the Motel
---Hotel

DEREK WALCOTT (b. 1930)
---A Far Cry from Africa
---Laventille
---The Fortunate Traveller
---from Omeros
------Book One, Chapter 1

GARY SYNDER (b. 1930)
---Riprap
---Beneath My Hand and Eye the Distant Hills. Your Body
---I Went Into the Maverick Bar
---Straight-Creek--Great Burn
---Axe Handles

GREGORY CORSO (1930-2001)
---Marriage
---Bomb

ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931-1991)
---Haiku 1, 4, 9
---Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
---The Idea of Ancestry
---A Poem for Myself
---For Malcolm, a Year After
---Television Speaks
---For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide

SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)
---The Colossus
---The Bee Meeting
---The Arrival of the Bee Box
---Stings
---The Swarm
---Wintering
---Daddy
---Ariel
---Lady Lazarus

HENRY DUMAS (1934-1968)
---Son of Msippi
---Kef 24
---Kef 16
---Fish
---Knees of a Natural Man
---Low Down Dog Blues
---Black Star Line
---Peas
---Yams

AMIRI BARAKA (Leroi Jones) (b. 1934)
---SOS
---Black Art
---When We'll Worship Jesus

N. SCOTT MOMADAY (b. 1934)
---Plainview: 3
---Buteo Regalis
---Crows in a Winter Composition
---Carriers of the Dream Wheel
---Rings of Bone
---The Stalker
--- from The Colors of Night
------Purple
---The Burning
---December 29, 1890
---The Shield That Came Back
---The Snow Mare
---To an Aged Bear
---A Benign Self-Portrait

MARK STRAND (b. 1934)
---The Prediction
---Where Are the Waters of Childhood?

AUDRE LORDE (1934-1992)
---From Coal
---Sisters in Arms
---Outlines
---Call

KATHLEEN FRASER (b. 1935)
---In Commemoration of the Visit of Foreign Commercial Representatives to Japan, 1947

CHARLES WRIGHT (b. 1935)
---Spider Crystal Ascension
---Clear Night
---Homage to Paul Cézanne

MARY OLIVER (b. 1935)
---Morning Walk
---At Great Pond
---Black Snake This Time

JAYNE CORTEZ (1936-2012)
---I Am New York City
---Do You Think

LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936-2010)
---I Am Accused of Tending To the Past
---At the cemetery, Walnut grove plantation, South Carolina, 1989
---Reply
---The Message of Crazy Horse
---Poem to My Uterus
---To My Last Period
---Brothers

SUSAN HOWE (b. 1937)
---From Articulation of Sound Forms in Time:
------The Falls Fight
------Hope Atherton's Wanderings

MICHAEL S. HARPER (b. 1938)
---Song: I Want a Witness
---Blue Ruth: America
---Brother John
---American History
---We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper
---Reuben, Reuben
---Deathwatch
---Dear John, Dear Coltrane

ISHMAEL REED (b. 1938)
---I am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra
---Oakland Blues

LAWSON FUSAO INADA (b. 1938)
--- Listening Images

ROBERT PINSKY (b. 1940)
---Dying
---The Unseen
---Shirt
---Veni, Creator Spiritus

WELTON SMITH (1940-2006)
---Malcolm

WILLIAM HEYEN (b. 1940)
---Riddle
---from Crazy Horse in Stillness:
------Forces
------White & Gold
------One World
------Bone & Velvet
------Mother
------The Count
------Surveyors
------Rot
------V
------Resolve, 1876
------Treaty
------Snowbirds
------The Slowing
------The Paper It's Written On
------The Tooth
------Wakan Tanka
------Disequilibrium
------Eclipse

JUDY GRAHN (b. 1940)
---I Have Come to Claim Marilyn Monroe's Body
---Vietnamese Woman Speaking to an American Soldier
---Carol
---Plainsong
---The Woman Whose Head is On Fire

CAROLYN M. RODGERS (1941-2010)
---How I Got Ovah
---And When the Revolution Came
---Mama's God

ROBERT HASS (b. 1941)
---Rusia En 1931
---A Story About the Body
---Forty Something
---Sonnet

LYN HEJINIAN (b. 1941)
---from My Life
------A pause, a rose, Something on paper
---from The Distance
------Nos. III, XIX, XXIV, XXX, XXXII, XXXVII

SHARON OLDS (b. 1942)
---The Pope's Penis
---Ideographs
---Photograph of the Girl
---Things That Are Worse Than Death
---The Waiting
---His Father's Cadaver
---Known to Be Left
---Left-Wife Goose

LOUISE GLÜCK (b. 1943)
---The Drowned Children
---Vespers (You thought we didn't know)
---Vespers (More than you love me, very possibly)
---The Wild Iris
---from Meadowlands:
------Penelope's Song
------Quiet Evening
------Parable of the King
------Parable of the Hostages
------Circe's Power
------Circe's Grief
------Reunion
------Telemachus' Burden
---Before the Storm
---A Village Life

MICHAEL PALMER (b. 1943)
---Song of the Round Man
---All those words
---I Have Answers to All of Your Questions
---Fifth Prose
---Autobiography

PAUL VIOLI (1944-2011)
---Index
---Tanka
---A Moveable Snack

THOMAS JAMES (1946-1974)
---Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh XXI Dynasty
---Dissecting a Pig

RON SILLIMAN (b. 1946)
---from Ketjak
---from Sunset Debris
---The Chinese Notebook
---from Toner

ADRIAN C. LOUIS (b. 1946)
---Dust World
---Wakinyan
---Without Words
---Coyote Night
---How Verdell and Dr. Zhivago Disassembled the Soviet Union
---Wanbli Gleska Win
---Looking for Judas
---A Colossal American Copulation
---Petroglyphs of Serena
---Jesus Finds His Ghost Shirt

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA (b. 1947)
---Tu Do Street
---Prisoners
---Communiqué
---The Dog Act
---The Nazi Doll
---Fog Galleon
---Work

Ai (1947-2010)
---The Root Eater
---Twenty-Year Marriage
---The German Army, Russia, 1943
---The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer

WENDY ROSE (b. 1948)
---Truganinny

TIMOTHY STEELE (b. 1948)
---Daybreak, Benedict Canyon
---April 27, 1937

ALBERT GOLDBARTH (b. 1948)
---Swan
---Coinages: A Fairy Tale
---1400

C. D. WRIGHT (b. 1949)
---Obedience of the Corpse
---from Just Whistle:
------THE BODY, ALIVE, NOT DEAD BUT DORMANT
------BECAUSE CONDITIONS ARE IDEAL FOR CROWING
------AND NOTHING
------THE CORPSE WAS IN THE BED
------ON THE MORN OF
------A PARTITION SEPARATES IT FROM OTHER BODIES
------OVER EVERYTHING
---Song of the Gourd
----From Cooling Time:
------Only the crossing counts
------Until words turn to moss
------What Would Oppen Say,
----DEAR DYING TOWN

JESSICA HAGEDORN (b. 1949)
---Ming the Merciless

CHARLES BERNSTEIN (b. 1950)
---You
---from Foreign Body Sensation
---The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree
---Riddle of the Fat Faced Man
---The Boy Soprano

JORIE GRAHAM (b. 1950)
---History
---From the New World

RAY A. YOUNG BEAR (b. 1950)
---In Viewpoint: Poem for 14 Catfish and The Town of Tama, Iowa
---It is the Fish-faced Boy Who Struggles

CAROLYN FORCHÉ (b. 1950)
---The Colonel
---The Museum of Stones
---The Lightkeeper
---Morning on the Island

ANDREW HUDGINS (b. 1951)
---At Chancellorsville: The Battle of the Wilderness
---The Summer of the Drought
---He Imagines His Wife Dead

GARRETT KAORU HONGO (b. 1951)
---Ancestral Graves, Kahuku
---Kubota to Miguel Hernandez in Heaven, Leupp, Arizona, 1942

RITA DOVE (b. 1952)
---Parsley
---Receiving the Stigmata

JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA (b. 1952)
---Mi Tío Baca El Poeta De Socorro
---The Painters

ALBERTO RÍOS (b. 1952)
---Madre Sofía
---What Happened to Me

ANITA ENDREZZE (b. 1952)
---Return of the Wolves
---Birdwatching at Fan Lake
---La Morena and Her Beehive Hairdo

ANA CASTILLO (b. 1953)
---Seduced by Natassja Kinski
---Hummingbird Heart

MARK DOTY (b. 1953)
---Homo Will Not Inherit
---The Embrace

HARRYETTE MULLEN (b. 1953)
---from Trimmings
---from S*PeRM**K*T

LOUISE ERDRICH (b. 1954)
---Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
---Dear John Wayne
---The Fence

LORNA DEE CERVANTES (b. 1954)
---Refugee Ship
---Poema para los Californios Muertos
---Starfish

SANDRA CISNEROS (b. 1954)
---Little Clown, My Heart

THYLIAS MOSS (b. 1954)
---Fullness
---There Will Be Animals
---The Lynching
---Interpretation of a Poem by Frost
---Ambition
---Crystals

PATRICIA SMITH (b. 1955)
---Blond White Women
---Skinhead
---From Blood Dazzler:
------from Tankas
---------(Never has there been)
---------(Go, they said. Go. Go.)
------Man on the TV Say
------Company's Coming
------Voodoo II: Money
------Voodoo V: Enemy Be Gone
------from What to Tweak
---------(Stifle the Stinking, shut down the cameras)
------Back Home
---Motown Crown

MARILYN CHIN (b. 1955)
---How I Got That Name
---Altar

JANICE N. HARRINGTON (b. 1956)
---Falling
---If She Had Lived

SESSHU FOSTER (b. 1957)
---We're caffeinated by rain inside concrete underpasses
---You'll be fucked up
---Look and look again, will he glance up all of a sudden
---I'm always grateful no one hears this terrible racket
---The Japanese man would not appear riding a horse
---Life Magazine, December, 1941
---I try to pee, but I can't
---Game 83

LI-YOUNG LEE (b. 1957)
---Persimmons
---Little Father

MARTíN ESPADA (b. 1957)
---Bully
---Revolutionary Spanish Lesson
---Niggerlips
---The New Bathroom Policy at English High School
---Fidel in Ohio
---Federico's Ghost
---The Saint Vincent de Paul Food Pantry Stomp
---Imagine the Angels Of Bread
---Blues for the Soldiers Who Told You
---The Trouble Ball
---Hard-Handed Men of Athens
---The Right Foot of Juan de Onate

ATSURO RILEY (b. 1960)
---From Romey's Order
------Picture
------Skillet
------Bell
------Roses

CLAUDIA RANKINE (b. 1963)
---from Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
------pp. 7, 23, 47-48, 71, 82-83, 113

D. A. POWELL (b. 1963)
---[the cocktail hour finally arrives: whether ending a day at the office]
---[dogs and boys can treat you like trash. And dogs do love trash]
---[came a voice in my gullet: rise up and feast. thunderous]

HEID E. ERDRICH (b. 1963)
---True Myth
---The Theft Outright
---Some Elsie

NATASHA TRETHEWAY (b. 1966)
---Native Ground
---Providence
---Believer
---Liturgy

SHERMAN ALEXIE (b. 1966)
---Indian Boy Love Song (#2)
--- from The Native American Broadcasting System: Evolution
---Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians
---How to Write the Great American Indian Novel
---Tourists

RICHARD SIKEN (b. 1967)
---Visible World
---A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

GRAPHIC INTERPRETATIONS:

CHARLES HENRI FORD
---Serenade to Leonor
---28

GWENDOLYN BROOKS
---We Real Cool

ALLEN GINSBERG
---Kraj Majales
---Moloch
---Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake

William Everson
---A Canticle to the Waterbirds

DAVID IGNATOW
---The Form Falls in On Itself

W. S. MERWIN
---When The War is Over

GARY SNYDER
---O Mother Gaia

RICHARD WILBUR
---A Difference

Index of Poem Titles
Index of Poets
About the Editor