Table of Contents

Introduction


QUINCY TROUPE
Flight
Eye Change Dreams

CZESLAW MILOSZ
Preparation
A Song on the End of the World
In Common

HEATHER McHUGH
The Size of Spokane
What He Thought
Unguent
High Jinx

CAMPBELL McGRATH
Delphos, Ohio
Capitalist Poem #42
The Golden Angel Pancake House
The Gulf

C. D. WRIGHT
Everything Good Between Men and Women
Song of the Gourd
30
JACK GILBERT
Tear It Down
Almost Happy
Married
The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

DAVID LEHMAN
January 1 [1998]
March 16 [1996]
April 26 [1998]
August 31 [2000]
December 29 [1997]

WANG PING
No Sense of Direction
Of Flesh & Spirit
These Images

JOSEPH BRODSKY
A Song
Blues
Törnfallet

PAUL BEATTY
Aa Bb Cc . . . Xx Yy and Zzing
Dib Dab
At Ease

DIANE DI PRIMA
April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa
Ode to Elegance

LORNA DEE CERVANTES
Bananas

PAUL MULDOON
The Birth
Anseo
The Briefcase

LUCILLE CLIFTON
sam
june 20
homage to my hips
daughters

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
My Friend’s Divorce
Going for Peaches, Fredericksburg, Texas
Wedding Cake

RICHARD BLANCO
Décima Guajira
Photo Shop
The Silver Sands

ALBERT GOLDBARTH
Coinages: A Fairy Tale
How Easy It Is
An Explanation

CARRIE ALLEN McCRAY
Thoughts at the Grave Site
Strange Patterns
Two Ways to Cook Macaroni and Cheese for Pastor
Trade Off
Anemone

BELLE WARING
It Was My First Nursing Job
So Get Over It, Honey

RUSSELL EDSON
On the Eating of Mice
Counting Sheep
Antimatter
The Fall

KEVIN YOUNG
[Blues]
Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary
Negative

NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL
Nude
The Race

CHARLES HARPER WEBB
The New Marriage
Tone of Voice
Buyer’s Remorse

DENISE DUHAMEL
Hippie Barbie
Barbie Joins a Twelve Step Program
Buddhist Barbie

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
Anodyne
The Deck
Venus’s-flytraps

HAL SIROWITZ
Two Visits in One Day
Horns on Your Head
Crumbs
Word Power

LUCIA PERILLO
Compulsory Travel
Lost Innocence of the Potato Givers

AMY GERSTLER
Modern Madonnas
Her Account of Herself
My Muse

MAURA STANTON
Gifts
Childhood
Maple Tree

MARILYN CHIN
The Floral Apron
Song of the Sad Guitar
Rhapsody in Plain Yellow

PHILIP BOOTH
Hope
First Lesson
Evening

JANE COOPER
The Blue Anchor
Rent

ELIZABETH SPIRES
Easter Sunday 1955
On the Island

Permissions
Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Editor

Catherine Bowman was born in El Paso, Texas, and currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she teaches at Indiana University. She has worked with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" since 1995 as a consultant and commentator on contemporary poetry. She is the award-winning author of two collections of poems, 1-800-HOT-RIBS and Rock Farm. She received the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize, the Kate Frost Tufts Discovery Award, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship from the University of Texas, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and two Yaddo Fellowships. Her poems have appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and in many magazines and journals, such as TriQuarterly, River Styx, Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Times, Crazy Horse, and The Paris Review, and in numerous anthologies. Her poems have also appeared in the anthologies A Joyful Noise, 13 Ways of Looking at a Poem, An Exhaltation of Forms, The Extraordinary Tide, Writing Down the Soul, Motion: American Sports Poems, and many others. Bowman teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and in 2001 she was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William and Mary. She regularly collaborates with composer and bassist John Lindberg; together they have performed and taught workshops at a variety of venues in both North America and Europe.