The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

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ISBN: 9781400030934 | 1400030935
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 4/8/2003

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Dazzling in its range, exhilarating in its immediacy and grace, this collection gathers together, from every region of the country and from the past forty years, the poems that continue to shape our imaginations. From Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich, to Robert Haas and Louise Gluck, this anthology takes the full measure of our poetry's daring energies and its tender understandings.

Introduction
A Note on the Second Edition, 2003
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket	p. 3
Memories of West Street and Lepke	p. 8
Man and Wife	p. 9
Skunk Hour	p. 10
The Mouth of the Hudson	p. 12
For the Union Dead	p. 13
Waking Early Sunday Morning	p. 15
History	p. 18
The Nihilist as Hero	p. 18
Reading Myself	p. 19
Obit	p. 19
Fishnet	p. 20
Dolphin	p. 20
Epilogue	p. 21
The Bight	p. 22
Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance	p. 23
At the Fishhouses	p. 25
The Shampoo	p. 28
Brazil, January 1, 1502	p. 28
Under the Window: Ouro Preto	p. 30
The Armadillo	p. 32
Filling Station	p. 33
In the Waiting Room	p. 34
One Art	p. 37
Poem	p. 38
Cuttings	p. 40
Root Cellar	p. 41
The Shape of the Fire	p. 41
The Waking	p. 44
I Knew a Woman	p. 45
In a Dark Time	p. 46
The Moon and the Night and the Men	p. 47
From the Dream Songs (1, 4, 5, 14, 29, 46, 76, 77, 143, 257, 384)	p. 48
90 North	p. 56
Eighth Air Force	p. 57
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner	p. 58
The Woman at the Washington Zoo	p. 58
Cinderella	p. 59
Next Day	p. 60
Well Water	p. 62
Masts at Dawn	p. 63
Birth of Love	p. 65
Rattlesnake Country	p. 66
Evening Hawk	p. 72
The Kingfishers	p. 73
For My Contemporaries	p. 80
To My Wife	p. 81
From a Century of Epigrams 9 (29, 53, 55, 62, 76)	p. 81
Night, Death, Mississippi	p. 83
Frederick Douglass	p. 85
Middle Passage	p. 85
Amsterdam Letter	p. 91
Cracked Looking Glass	p. 93
After Reading The Country of the Pointed Firs	p. 94
Teleology	p. 97
Unconscious Came a Beauty	p. 98
Stone Gullets	p. 99
Staying at Ed's Place	p. 99
Strawberrying	p. 100
A Poem Beginning With a Line by Pindar	p. 101
Styx	p. 109
The Illiterate	p. 111
Thoughts on One's Head	p. 112
Consequences	p. 113
Country Stars	p. 115
The Jain Bird Hospital in Delhi	p. 115
Storm Windows	p. 117
Writing	p. 118
Money	p. 119
The Dependencies	p. 120
Learning the Trees	p. 121
Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry	p. 122
The War in the Air	p. 123
A Baroque Wall-Foundation in the Villa Sciarra	p. 124
Looking Into History	p. 126
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World	p. 128
Mind	p. 129
Advice to a Prophet	p. 130
Walking to Sleep	p. 131
Hamlen Brook	p. 135
Homework	p. 136
Into Mexico	p. 137
The Twins	p. 138
A View	p. 139
The Stream	p. 141
The Pruned Tree	p. 145
The Wars	p. 146
Menage a Trois	p. 147
Elegy for My Sister	p. 149
Rules of Sleep	p. 152
Einstein's Bathrobe	p. 153
The Heaven of Animals	p. 155
The Hospital Window	p. 156
The Sheep Child	p. 158
The Strength of Fields	p. 160
A Hill	p. 162
Third Avenue in Sunlight	p. 163
"More Light! More Light!"	p. 164
Peripeteia	p. 165
The Feast of Stephen	p. 168
The Crystal Lithium	p. 170
Shimmer	p. 175
Korean Mums	p. 176
Clouds	p. 178
The Ache of Marriage	p. 179
Intrusion	p. 180
Seeing for a Moment	p. 180
Prisoners	p. 181
Graves at Elkhorn	p. 183
The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir	p. 184
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg	p. 186
The River Now	p. 187
An Afternoon at the Beach	p. 188
Amor Vincit Omnia	p. 189
From Autumn Shade (3, 6, 8, 9)	p. 189
A Muse of Water	p. 192
Amusing Our Daughters	p. 194
From Pro Feminia (I, II)	p. 195
The Evening of the Mind	p. 198
Men at Forty	p. 199
The Tourist from Syracuse	p. 200
Variations on a Text by Vallejo	p. 201
The Assassination	p. 202
Mule Team and Poster	p. 202
To the Harbormaster	p. 204
A Step Away from Them	p. 205
Meditations in an Emergency	p. 206
Why I Am Not a Painter	p. 208
The Day Lady Died	p. 208
Having a Coke With You	p. 209
Ave Maria	p. 211
The Best Slow Dancer	p. 212
The Naval Trainees Learn How to Jump Overboard	p. 213
The Excursion of the Speech and Hearing Class	p. 214
Five Dawn Skies in November	p. 215
Making Camp	p. 215
The Source	p. 216
I Know a Man	p. 218
The Rescue	p. 219
Air: "The Love of a Woman"	p. 219
For Friendship	p. 220
For Love	p. 220
Again	p. 222
The World	p. 223
From Howl (I)	p. 225
Sunflower Sutra	p. 229
My Sad Self	p. 231
Wales Visitation	p. 233
April Inventory	p. 237
From Heart's Needle (2, 6)	p. 239
Mementos, 1	p. 241
A Locked House	p. 242
A Renewal	p. 244
Voices from the Other World	p. 245
Days of 1964	p. 246
Willowware Cup	p. 248
Lost in Translation	p. 249
The Animals	p. 256
Some Last Questions	p. 257
The River of Bees	p. 257
For the Anniversary of My Death	p. 258
The Asians Dying	p. 259
For a Coming Extinction	p. 260
The Night of the Shirts	p. 261
Bread	p. 261
St. Vincent's	p. 262
He Held Radical Light	p. 265
Gravelly Run	p. 266
Corsons Inlet	p. 267
Reflective	p. 271
Terrain	p. 271
The City Limits	p. 272
Glazunoviana	p. 274
Soonest Mended	p. 275
As One Put Drunk Into the Packet-Boat	p. 277
Pyrography	p. 278
And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name	p. 281
Syringa	p. 282
My Erotic Double	p. 284
At the Executed Murderer's Grave	p. 286
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio	p. 289
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota	p. 290
Beginning	p. 290
A Blessing	p. 291
In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned	p. 292
A Winter Daybreak Above Vence	p. 293
Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond	p. 295
Last Songs	p. 296
The Bear	p. 297
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps	p. 300
The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak	p. 301
The Vow	p. 302
The Man on the Hotel Room Bed	p. 302
Her Kind	p. 304
Music Swims Back to Me	p. 305
The Truth the Dead Know	p. 306
The Starry Night	p. 307
With Mercy for the Greedy	p. 307
Wanting to Die	p. 308
The Room of My Life	p. 310
The Horse	p. 311
They Feed They Lion	p. 313
Belle Isle, 1949	p. 314
You Can Have It	p. 314
Rain Downriver	p. 316
Sweet Will	p. 317
Family History	p. 320
The Dream	p. 324
From All of Us Here	p. 325
The Night Mirror	p. 328
From Powers of Thirteen (3, 29, 69, 82, 87, 130)	p. 329
Swan and Shadow	p. 333
The Mad Potter	p. 334
The Venetian Interior, 1889	p. 338
At the Monument to Pierre Louys	p. 342
Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law	p. 345
Planetarium	p. 349
The Burning of Paper Instead of Children	p. 351
Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff	p. 354
For the Record	p. 357
For an Album	p. 358
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout	p. 359
Riprap	p. 360
Burning Island	p. 361
The Bath	p. 362
I Went Into the Maverick Bar	p. 365
Axe Handles	p. 366
The Colossus	p. 368
The Hanging Man	p. 369
Morning Song	p. 370
Daddy	p. 370
Fever 103[degree]	p. 373
Ariel	p. 375
Lady Lazarus	p. 376
Edge	p. 378
Words	p. 379
Keeping Things Whole	p. 381
Coming to This	p. 382
The Prediction	p. 382
"The Dreadful Has Already Happened"	p. 383
The Story of Our Lives	p. 384
Where Are the Waters of Childhood?	p. 390
Stone Canyon Nocturne	p. 392
Spider Crystal Ascension	p. 393
Clear Night	p. 393
Homage to Paul Cezanne	p. 394
The Other Side of the River	p. 398
Coal	p. 402
Movement Song	p. 403
Afterimages	p. 404
Rain	p. 409
When Death Comes	p. 413
Whelks	p. 414
Hawk	p. 415
The Homecoming Singer	p. 417
Benjamin Banneker Sends His Almanac to Thomas Jefferson	p. 419
Journey to the Place of Ghosts	p. 422
It Is This Way With Men	p. 425
The Gas Station	p. 426
Tar	p. 428
Alzheimer's: The Wife	p. 430
Tapestry	p. 431
My Shoes	p. 432
Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites	p. 433
Watermelons	p. 435
Eyes Fastened With Pins	p. 436
Empire of Dreams	p. 436
Prodigy	p. 437
Form the World Doesn't End	p. 438
Dear John, Dear Coltrane	p. 439
Grandfather	p. 441
Nightmare Begins Responsibility	p. 442
The Militance of a Photograph in the Passbook of a Bantu Under Detention	p. 443
Another Life	p. 447
Happy Birthday	p. 450
The Sacrifice	p. 451
Poem About People	p. 453
Dying	p. 455
The Hearts	p. 456
Shirt	p. 459
Heroic Simile	p. 461
Meditation at Lagunitas	p. 463
Between the Wars	p. 464
Misery and Splendor	p. 465
Beach Glass	p. 467
Imago	p. 468
Stacking the Straw	p. 471
Medusa	p. 472
Elegy in an Abandoned Boatyard	p. 474
The Roundhouse Voices	p. 476
Lake Drummond Dream	p. 479
From Taking Notice (7, 11, 14, 25)	p. 481
Ballad of Ladies Lost and Found	p. 483
Nights of 1964-66: The Old Reliable	p. 486
Nabokov's Blues	p. 489
Onions	p. 491
107th and Amsterdam	p. 493
Dire Cure	p. 493
You Kindly	p. 497
The Promise	p. 499
The Glass	p. 500
The Feelings	p. 501
Messengers	p. 503
The Drowned Children	p. 504
The Garden	p. 505
Palais Des Arts	p. 507
Mock Orange	p. 508
Eros	p. 508
Black Soap	p. 510
The Microscope in Winter	p. 512
Streamers	p. 513
H	p. 517
"or anything resembling it"	p. 518
Erolog	p. 519
The White Notebook	p. 521
The Spire	p. 524
The Lotus Flowers	p. 525
Song and Story	p. 527
Winter Field	p. 529
Paired Things	p. 530
Mirage Oases	p. 531
A Cat/ A Future	p. 531
The Old Cosmologists	p. 532
That Will to Divest	p. 532
Drops in the Bucket	p. 533
Providence	p. 534
Camouflaging the Chimera	p. 536
Facing It	p. 537
Ode to the Maggot	p. 538
Dia de los Muertos	p. 539
The Typewriter's the Kind	p. 540
From 20,000 Feet	p. 541
Numberless	p. 542
Auto	p. 543
Fast Break	p. 545
A Short Lexicon of Torture in the Eighties	p. 546
My Father's Back	p. 547
Over and Over Stitch	p. 549
San Sepolcro	p. 550
Orpheus and Eurydice	p. 552
Ebbtide	p. 554
Adolescence - II	p. 557
Parsley	p. 558
Canary	p. 560
Broadway	p. 561
Brilliance	p. 563
A Display of Mackerel	p. 565
Door to the River	p. 567
The Paperweight	p. 571
Signs	p. 572
Supernatural Love	p. 572
Chiffon Morning	p. 575
Peonies	p. 578
You Come When I Call You	p. 578
Black Mane	p. 580
This Hour and What Is Dead	p. 582
Pillow	p. 583
One Heart	p. 584
Dwelling	p. 585
The Compass	p. 586
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials