Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Edited by

Dana Gioia

David Mason Colorado College

Meg Schoerke San Francisco State University

with D.C. Stone

SUB GSttingen 7 217 254 470

2004 A 8314

Boston Burr Ridge, IL Dubuque.'IA Madison, Wl New York San Francisco St. Louis Bangkok 'Bogota Caracas Kuala Lumpur Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan Montreal New Delhi Santiago Seoul Singapore Sydney Taipei Toronto Contents

Preface xli

Realism and Naturalism Historical and Critical Overview 2

STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900) 10 Black riders came from the sea 12 In the desert 12 I stood upon a high place 12 I saw a man pursuing the horizon 12 I met a seer 13 On the horizon the peaks assembled 13 I walked in a desert 13 A man feared that he might find an assassin 13 Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind 14 The wayfarer 14 A man said to the universe 15 My Cross! 15 A man adrift on a slim spar 15

EDWIN MARKHAM (1852-1940) 16 The Man with the Hoe 17 Outwitted 18

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) 19 An Obstacle 20 Whatever Is 21

EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868-1950) 21 From Spoon River Anthology 22 The Hill 22 Anne Rutledge 23 Editor Whedon 24 vi Contents Knowlt Hoheimer 24 Lucirida Matlbck 25 , Petit, the Poet 25

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935) 26 The Clerks 28 George Crabbe 28 Reuben Bright 29 How Annandale Went Out 29 Miniver Cheevy 30 The House on the Hill 30 Luke Havergal 31 Richard Cory 32 Another Dark Lady 32 Bewick Finzer 33 Eros Turannos 33 The Mill 35 Mr. Flood's Party 35 New England 37 The Sheaves 37

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938) 37 O Black and Unknown Bards 39 The Creation 40

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (1872-1906) 42 We Wear the Mask 44 Sympathy 44 The Debt 45 The Poet 45 To-a Captious Critic 45

TRUMBULL STICKNEY (1874-1904) 45 Mnemosyne 46 Near Helikon 47 Sir, say no more 47

ROBERT FROST (1874-1963) 47 Mowing 51 My November Guest 52 Contents vii Storm Fear 52 The Tuft of Flowers 53 , After Apple-Picking 54 The Death of the Hired Man 55 Home Burial 59 Mending Wall 62 The Wood-Pile 63 Birches 64 "Out, Out—" 65 The Oven Bird 66 The Road Not Taken 66 Fire and Ice 67 The Need of Being Versed in Country Things 67 Nothing Gold Can Stay 68 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 68 To Earthward 68 Acquainted with the Night 69 Once by the Pacific 70 Desert Places 70 Design 71 Neither Out Far Nor in Deep 71 Provide Provide 71 Come In 72 The Gift Outright 73 The Silken Tent 73 Directive 73

SARAH N. CLEGHORN (1876-1959) 75 The Golf Links 75 The Survival of the Fittest 76

ALAN SEEGER (1888-1916) 76 I Have a Rendezvous with Death 77

JOHN ALLAN WYETH, JR. (1894-1981) 77 The Train from Brest 78 Corbie to Sailly-le-Sec 79 War in Heaven 79 viii Contents Early Modernism: From Imagism to High Modernism Historical and Critical Overview 82

AMY LOWELL (1874-1925) 98 Patterns 99 A Decade 102 A Lover 102 The Pond 102 Opal 102

GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946) 103 From Tender Buttons 105 A Blue Coat 105 A Piano 105 A Purse 106 A Mounted Umbrella 106 A Time to Eat 106 A Fire 106 A Handkerchief 106 Red Roses 106

YONE NOGUCHI (1875-1947) 106 I Hear You Call, Pine Tree 107 From Japanese Hokkus 107

ADELAIDE CRAPSEY (1878-1914) 108 November Night 109 Triad 109 The Warning 109

CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967) 109 Chicago 111 Fog 112 Limited 112 Window 112 Cool Tombs 112 Grass 113 Cahoots 113 Contents ix

VACHEL LINDSAY (1879-1931)114 General William Booth Enters into Heaven, 115 Factory Windows Are Always Broken 117 The Voyage 117

WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955) 118 The Snow Man 122 Nuances of a Theme by Williams 122 A High-Toned Old Christian Woman 122 The Emperor of Ice-Cream 123 Tea at the Palaz of Hoon 124 Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock 124 Sunday Morning 124 Bantams in Pine-Woods 128 Anecdote of the Jar 128 To the One of Fictive Music 128 Peter Quince at the Clavier 129 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 131 To the Roaring Wind 133 The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad 133 Evening without Angels 134 The Idea of Order at Key West 135 A Postcard from the Volcano 136 From Notes toward a Supreme Fiction 137 The Course of a Particular 140 Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour 140 Of Modern Poetry 141 The Plain Sense of Things 141 Of Mere Being 142

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963) 142 Aux Imagistes 146 Danse Russe 147 Dedication for a Plot of Ground 147 El Hombre 148 Tract 149 Portrait of a Lady 150 The Great Figure 151 Queen-Anne's-Lace 151 To Waken an Old Lady 152 x Contents The Widow's Lament in Springtime 152 Spring and All 153 The Right of Way 154 ' To Elsie 155 The Red Wheelbarrow 156 The Last Words of My English Grandmother 157 This is Just to Say 158 Flowers by the Sea 158 The Yachts 158 The Dance 159 The Descent 159 From Asphodel, That Greeny Flower 161

EZRA POUND (1885-1972) 168 Sestina: Altaforte 172 Portrait D'une Femme 174 The Return 175 Alba 175 Coda 175 The Coming of War: Actseon 175 The Garden 176 The Garret 176 Papyrus 177 In a Station of the Metro 177 The Jewel Stairs' Grievance 177 Lament of the Frontier Guard 177 The Rest 178 The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter 179 Salutation 179 A Pact 180 From Homage to Sextus Propertius 180 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 183 Mauberley 192 From The Cantos 197 Canto I ("And then went down to the ship") 197 Canto XLV ("With Usura ") 199 Canto LXXXI (Libretto: "Yet / Ere the season died a-cold") 201

H. D. [HILDA DOOLITTLE] (1886-1961) 203 Oread 205 Garden 206 Contents xi

Pear Tree 206 The Pool 207 Sea Rose 207 ' Sea Violet 207 Storm 208 Eurydice 208 At Baia 212 Helen 213 From The Walls Do Not Fall 213 1 ("An incident here and there ") 213 2 ("Evil was active in the land") 215 From The Flowering of the Rod 216 6 ("So I would rather drown, remembering—") 216

ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887-1962) 217 To the Stone-Cutters 220 Boats in a Fog 220 Shine, Perishing Republic 221 Fawn's Foster-Mother 221 Hurt Hawks 222 Hands 223 Shane O'Neill's Cairn 223 New Mexican Mountain 224 November Surf 224 Ave Caesar 225 Love the Wild Swan 225 Rock and Hawk 225 Carmel Point 226

MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972) 226 The Fish 229 Poetry 230 Poetry (Revised Version) 231 Those Various Scalpels 231 To a Steam Roller 232 Marriage 232 An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish 240 A Graveyard 240 New York 241 Silence 242 The Steeple-Jack 242 xii Contents What Are Years? 244 In Distrust of Merits 245 The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing 247

T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) 248 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 251 Preludes 255 The Boston Evening Transcript 256 Hysteria 256 La Figlia che Piange 257 Sweeney Among the Nightingales 257 The Waste Land 259 The Hollow Men 273 Journey of the Magi 276 Ash-Wednesday 277 From Four Quartets 283 Burnt Norton 283

E. E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962) 288 in Just- 290 Buffalo Bill 's 290 the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls 291 next to of course god america i 291 ~ i sing of Olaf glad and big 291 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond 292 may i feel said he 293 r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r 294 you shall above all things be glad and young 294 anyone lived in a pretty how town 295 my father moved through dooms of love 295 pity this busy monster,manunkind 297 o purple finch 298

WITTER BYNNER (1881-1968) and ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE (1883-1945) 298 Opus 181 (Anne Knish) 299 Opus 104 (Emanuel Morgan) 300 Opus 40 (Emanuel Morgan) 300 Opus 15 (Emanuel Morgan) 301 Contents xiii The Harlem Renaissance Historical and Critical Overview 304

ANGELINA WELD GRIMKE (1880-1958) 311 The Black Finger 312 Tenebris 312 A Mona Lisa 313 Fragment 313

CLAUDE McKAY (1889-1948) 314 If We Must Die 315 The Lynching 315 America 316 My Mother 316 The White City 317 Outcast 317

JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967) 318 Seventh Street 319 November Cotton Flower 320 Georgia Dusk 320 Reapers 321

STERLING A. BROWN (1901-1989) 321 Memphis Blues 323 Mose 324 Slim Greer 325 Slim in Atlanta 327

GWENDOLYN BENNETT (1902-1981) 328 Hatred 329 To a Dark Girl 329

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967) 330 The Negro Speaks of Rivers 333 I, Too 333 Negro 334 Cross 334 xiv Contents The Weary Blues 335 Dream Variations 335 . Song for a Dark Girl 336 Mother to Son 336 Park Bench 337 50-50 337 KuKlux 338 Madam's Past History 338 Island 339 Harlem 339 Theme for English B 339 Homecoming 340 Dinner Guest: Me 341

COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946) 341 For a Lady I Know 343 For Paul Laurence Dunbar 343 Heritage 344 Incident 347 Yet Do I Marvel 347 To Certain Critics 347

Modern Alternatives: Romantics and Neoclassicists Historical and Critical Overview 350

SARA TEASDALE (1884-1933) 360 Over the Roofs 361 There Will Come Soft Rains 362 Since There Is No Escape 363 Water Lilies 363 In a Darkening Garden 363

ELINOR WYLIE (1885-1928) 364 The Eagle and the Mole 365 Wild Peaches 366 From the Wall 367 Let No Charitable Hope 368 Prophecy 368 Contents xv JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974) 368 Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter 370 Winter Remembered 371 Blue Girls 371 Dead Boy 372 Piazza Piece 372

CONRAD AIKEN (1889-1973) 373 Morning Song of Senlin 374 From Priapus and the Pool 375 III ("When trout swim down Great Ormond Street") 375

JOHN PEALE BISHOP (1892-1944) 376 Perspectives Are Precipices 377 My Grandfather Kept Peacocks 378

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH (1892-1982) 378 Ars Poetica 381 The End of the World 382 The Silent Slain 382 You, Andrew Marvell 383

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950) 384 Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied 386 First Fig 386 Second Fig 386 I Shall Forget You Presently, My Dear 386 Recuerdo 387 Passer Mortuus Est 387 What Lips My Lips Have Kissed 388 Love Is Not All 388 Hearing Your Words, and Not a Word among Them 388

DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967) 389 Comment 390 One Perfect Rose 391 Resume 391 Unfortunate Coincidence 391 Sanctuary 391 xvi Contents LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970) 392 The Alchemist 394 The Crows 394 Medusa 394 Memory 395 Women 395 Knowledge 396 Cassandra 396 Henceforth, from the Mind 396 The Sleeping Fury 397 Song for the Last Act 398 Night 399

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET (1898-1943) 399 American Names 400 1936 401

MELVIN B. TOLSON (1898-1966) 401 From A Gallery of Harlem Portraits 404 Sootie Joe 404 An Ex-Judge at the Bar 404 Dark Symphony 405

HART CRANE (1899-1932) 409 Praise for an Urn 413 Garden Abstract 413 At Melville's Tomb 414 Black Tambourine 415 Chaplinesque 415 My Grandmother's Love Letters 416 Voyages 417 The Wine Menagerie 421 From The Bridge 422 To Brooklyn Bridge 422 Royal Palm 424 The Broken Tower 424

ALLEN TATE (1899-1979) 425 Ode to the Confederate Dead 427 The Subway 429 Contents xvii ROBERT FRANCIS (1901-1987) 430 Hallelujah: A Sestina 430 , Catch 431 Yes, What? 432

RICHARD EBERHART (b. 1904) 432 The Fury of Aerial Bombardment 433

ROBERT PENN WARREN (1905-1989) 433 Bearded Oaks 435 Evening Hawk 436 What Voice at Moth-Hour 436

Mid-Century Poets Historical and Critical Overview 440

THEODORE ROETHKE (1908-1963) 448 Cuttings 450 Cuttings [later version] 450 Root Cellar 450 Dolor 451 My Papa's Waltz 451 Elegy for Jane 451 The Waking 452 I Knew a Woman 453 In a Dark Time 453 From "North American Sequence" 454 The Longing 454 Journey to the Interior 456 -The Far Field 457

ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) 460 The Fish 462 The Map 463 At the Fishhouses 464 The Armadillo 466 Questions of Travel 467 Visits to St. Elizabeths 469 In the Waiting Room 471 xviii Contents The Moose 473 One Art 47? i J.V.CUNNINGHAM (1911-1985) 477 For My Contemporaries 478 In the Thirtieth Year 479 To My Wife 479 To What Strangers, What Welcome 480 Ten Epigrams 484 On Doctor Drink 485

JOSEPHINE MILES (1911-1985) 486 Reason 487 Riddle 487 Conception 488 Album 488

ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980) 488 The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield 490 Frederick Douglass 492 Middle Passage 492 Night, Death, Mississippi 497 Those Winter Sundays 498 The Whipping 499 A Plague of Starlings 499

JOHN FREDERICK NIMS (1913-1999) 500 Dedication: Love Poem 501 Epigrams 501

MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980) 502 Effort at Speech between Two People 504 To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century 504 Double Dialogue 505 The Poem as Mask 505 Poem 506

JOHN BERRYMAN (1914-1972) 506 Desires of Men and Women 508 Contents xix From The Dream Songs 509 . 1 ("Huffy Henry hid.the day") 509 14 ("Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.") 510 29 ("There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart") 510 384 ("The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done") 510

RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965) 511 Losses 512 The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 513 90 North 513 The Woman at the Washington Zoo 514 Next Day 515

WELDON KEES (1914-1955) 517 For My Daughter 520 Crime Club 520 River Song 520 Robinson 521 Aspects of Robinson 522 1926 522 Round 523

DUDLEY RANDALL (1914-2000) 524 Ballad of Birmingham 525 Booker T. and W. E. B. 526 A Different Image 527

WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914-1993) 527 The Farm on the Great Plains 528 Traveling through the Dark 529 Ask Me 530 ' At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border 530 Our Kind 530

THOMAS MERTON (1915-1968) 531 For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943 532 The Reader 533

MARGARET WALKER (1915-1998) 533 For Malcolm X 534 xx Contents JOHN CIARDI (1916-1986) 535 Most Like an Arch This Marriage 536 , Firsts 537

THOMAS McGRATH (1916-1990) 538 Jig Tune: Not for Love 539 Ars Poetica: or: Who Lives in the Ivory Tower? 540 The Buffalo Coat 540 Remembering the Children of Auschwitz 541

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000) 542 The Mother 544 Sadie and Maud 544 Southeast Corner 545 From Notes from the Childhood and the Girlhood 545 The Rites for Cousin Vit 546 The Bean Eaters 546 We Real Cool 547 The Blackstone Rangers 547 The Coora Flower 549

ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977) 549 Concord 552 The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket 553 Memories of West Street and Lepke 557 Skunk Hour 558 For the Union Dead 559 Waking Early Sunday Morning 561 History 563 Epilogue 564

WILLIAM JAY SMITH (b. 1918) 564 A Note on the Vanity Dresser 565 Galileo Galilei 566 American Primitive 566

MAY SWENSON (1919-1989) 567 Question 568 Four-Word Lines 569 Strawberrying 569 Contents xxi Open Form: Objectivists, Black Mountain Poets, San Francisco Renaissance, and Beats Historical and Critical Overview 572

LAURA RIDING (1901-1991) 579 Helen's Burning 581 The Map of Places 581 The World and I 581

KENNETH FEARING (1902-1961) 5 82 Dirge 583 Literary 584

LORINE NIEDECKER (1903-1970) 585 The Element Mother 587 Sorrow Moves in Wide Waves 588 Poet's Work 588 I Knew a Clean Man 588 [Autumn Sequence] 589 "Autumn" 589 "Ice" 589 "Last night the trash barrel" 589 "The boy tossed the news" 589 "Popcorn-can cover" 589 "Truth" 589 "Lights, lifts" 589 "O late fall" 590 He Lived—Childhood Summers 590

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY (1904-1978) 590 Non Ti Fidar 592 A Song for the Year's End 593 Starglow 594

KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982) 594 A Very Early Morning Exercise 596 Andree Rexroth 597 Vitamins and Roughage 598 xxii Contents The Signature of All Things 598

GEORGE OPPEN (1908-1984) 600 ' From Discrete Series 602 The knowledge not of sorrow, you were 602 Leviathan 603 The Bicycles and the Apex 603 Psalm 604 The Building of the Skyscraper 605 From "Of Being Numerous" 605 Strange That the Youngest People I Know 605

CHARLES OLSON (1910-1970) 606 Maximus, to himself 607 La Chute 609

WILLIAM EVERSON [BROTHER ANTONINUS] (1912-1994) 609 These Are the Ravens 611 The Making of the Cross 612 Advent 613

ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988) 613 The Temple of the Animals 615 Poetry, a Natural Thing 616 This Place Rumored to Have Been Sodom 617 Roots and Branches 618 The Torso (Passages 18) 618

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (b. 1919) 620 In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See 621

DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-1997) 622 ". . . Else a great Prince in prison lies" 625 The Ache of Marriage 625 Hypocrite Women 625 O Taste and See 626 Our Bodies 627 Prisoners 627 Contents xxiii

SAMUEL MENASHE (b. 1925) 628 0 Many Named Beloved 629 The Shrine Whose Shape I Am 630 Self Employed 630 At a Standstill 631 Curriculum Vitae 631

JACK SPICER (1925-1965) 631 Conspiracy 633 A Book of Music 634

A. R. AMMONS (1926-2001) 634 Gravelly Run 636 The City Limits 636 The Constant 637 Cut the Grass 638 Viable 638

ROBERT CREELEY (b. 1926) 639 1 Know a Man 641 Heroes 641 Oh No 642 For Love 642 The Rain 644 "I Keep to Myself Such Measures ..." 644

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997) 645 America 647 Howl 649 A Supermarket in California 656

GARY SNYDER (b. 1930) 657 Riprap 659 Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout 659 Water 660 Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen 660 Axe Handles 660 xxiv Contents Postwar Formalism and Its Discontents: From Formalism to Feminism and the Confessional Mode Historical and Critical Overview 664

HOWARD NEMEROV (1920-1991) 671 A Primer of the Daily Round 672 ; The Blue Swallows 673 The Western Approaches 674 Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry 675 The Makers 675 The War in the Air 675

MONA VAN DUYN (b. 1921) 676 Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri 677 Causes 678

RICHARD WILBUR (b. 1921) 678 The Beautiful Changes 680 The Pardon 681 Love Calls Us to the Things of This World 682 Cottage Street, 1953 682 Piccola Commedia 683 To the Etruscan Poets 685 The Writer 685 Hamlen Brook 686 The Ride 686

HOWARD MOSS (1922-1987) 687 The Pruned Tree 688 Tourists 689

JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997) 690 The Performance 691 The Heaven of Animals 693 The Lifeguard 694 The Sheep Child 695 Contents xxv ANTHONY HECHT (b. 1923) 696 Adam 699 < The Dover Bitch—A Criticism of Life? 700 A Hill 701 The Book of Yolek 702 The Mysteries of Caesar 703 Sarabande on Attaining the Age of Seventy-seven 704

RICHARD HUGO (1923-1982) 705 Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg 706 Driving Montana 707

LOUIS SIMPSON (b. 1923) 708 Early in the Morning 709 The Man Who Married Magdalene 710 To the Western World 711 American Poetry 711 My Father in the Night Commanding No 711 The Unwritten Poem 712 A Clearing 713

DONALD JUSTICE (b. 1925) 715 Counting the Mad 717 In Bertram's Garden 718 On the Death of Friends in Childhood 718 But That Is Another Story 718 Men at Forty 719 Variations on a Text by Vallejo 720 Psalm and Lament 720

CAROLYN KIZER (b. 1925) 721 From Pro Femina 723 I. ("From Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women.") 723 II. ("I take as my theme 'The Independent Woman.") 724 III. ("I will speak about women of letters, for I'm in the racket.") 725 Bitch 726

MAXINE KUMIN (b. 1925) 727 At the End of the Affair 728 xxvi Contents How It Is 728 The Retrieval System 729 , Noted in the New York Times 730

W. D. SNODGRASS (b. 1926) 731 April Inventory 732 Leaving the Motel 733 Disposal 734

JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995) 735 The Broken Home 737 The Mad Scene 740 Last Words 740 Casual Wear 741

DONALD HALL (b. 1928) 741 My Son My Executioner 742 Names of Horses 743 Ox Cart Man 744

ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974) 744 Her Kind 746 The Abortion 746 The Truth the Dead Know 747 Wanting to Die 748

X. J. KENNEDY (b. 1929) 748 In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day 750 Little Elegy 751 Loose Woman 751 The Waterbury Cross 751

ADRIENNE RICH (b. 1929) 752 Aunt Jennifer's Tigers 754 The Diamond Cutters 754 Living in Sin 755 Diving into the Wreck 755 From a Survivor 758 Rape 758 Contents xxvii Power 759 Dedications 759 Tattered Kaddish 760

SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963) 761 The Colossus 764 Metaphors 764 Blackberrying 765 Mirror 765 Daddy 766 Morning Song 768 Lady Lazarus 768 Edge 770

ANNE STEVENSON (b. 1933) 771 The Victory 772 Generations 773 The Marriage 773 Making Poetry 773 Alas 774

American Internationalism: Surrealism, Deep Image Poetry, and the New York School Historical and Critical Overview 776

BARBARA GUEST (b. 1920) 784 Green Revolutions 785 Poem 785

EDWARD FIELD (b. 1924) 786 Curse of the Cat Woman 787 Roaches 788

JOHN HAINES (b. 1924) 790 Winter News 791 The Flight 792 The Ghost Towns 792 xxviii Contents

Night 793

ROBERT BLY (b. 1926) 794 Waking from Sleep 796 The Busy Man Speaks 796 Counting Small-Boned Bodies 797 Johnson's Cabinet Watched by Ants 797 Romans Angry about the Inner World 797

FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966) 798 Today 800 Poem ("The eager note on my door said 'Call me,) 800 To the Harbormaster 800 The Day Lady Died 801 Autobiographia Literaria 802 Homosexuality 802 Why I Am Not a Painter 803

JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927) 804 Some Trees 806 These Lacustrine Cities 807 My Erotic Double 807 Paradoxes and Oxymorons 808 At North Farm 808 Just Walking Around 809

W. S. MERWIN (b. 1927) 809 Air 811 The Animals 811 For a Coming Extinction 812 For the Anniversary of My Death 812 The Last One 813 Some Last Questions 814 Rain Travel 815

JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980) 815 Complaint 817 Saint Judas 818 Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio 818 A Blessing 819 Contents xxix

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota 819 Twilights 820 The Life 820

PHILIP LEVINE (b. 1928) 821 On the Edge 822 Animals Are Passing from Our Lives 822 To a Child Trapped in a Barber Shop 823 They Feed They Lion 824 You Can Have It 825

MARK STRAND (b. 1934) 826 Keeping Things Whole 827 Eating Poetry 827

CHARLES WRIGHT (b. 1935) 828 The New Poem 830 Clear Night 830 Stone Canyon Nocturne 830 California Dreaming 831

CHARLES SIMIC (b. 1938) 833 Fear 834 My Shoes 834 Fork 835 Eyes Fastened with Pins 835 Classic Ballroom Dances 836

JAMES TATE (b. 1943) 836 The Lost Pilot 837 Teaching the Ape to Write Poems 839 The Chaste Stranger 839

Return to Realism: Regionalism and Cultural Identity Historical and Critical Overview 842

MILLER WILLIAMS (b. 1930) 847 On a Photograph of My Mother at Seventeen 848 Ruby Tells All 848 xxx Contents ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931-1991) 850 Haiku 851 Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane 852 The Idea of Ancestry 853 The Warden Said to Me the Other Day 854 A Poem for Myself 854

RHINA ESPAILLAT (b. 1932) 855 Agua 855 Bilingual/Bilingiie 856 Bra 857

LINDA PASTAN (b. 1932) 857 Journey's End 858 Ethics 858 1932- 859

AMIRI BARAKA/LeROI JONES (b. 1934) 859 Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note 861 Legacy 862 Black Bourgeoisie 862

AUDRE LORDE (1934-1992) 863 Father Son and Holy Ghost 864 Coal 865 October 866

N. SCOTT MOMADAY (b. 1934) 867 Simile 868 Carriers of the Dream Wheel 868 The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee 869 The Eagle-Feather Fan 870 Headwaters 870

FRED CHAPPELL (b. 1936) 870 Narcissus and Echo 871 The Epigrammatist 872 Televangelist 872 Overheard in the Tearoom 872 Contents xxxi LUCILLE CLIFTON (b. 1936) 872 good times* 873 ' • , homage to my hips 874 to my last period 874

C. K. WILLIAMS (b. 1936) 875 Hood 876 From My Window 877 Elms 878

BERNICE ZAMORA (b. 1938) 879 Penitents 879

ISHMAEL REED (b. 1938) 880 I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra 881 Oakland Blues 883

JARED CARTER (b. 1939) 884 Work, for the Night Is Coming 885 The Gleaning 885

STEPHEN DUNN (b. 1939) 886 Beautiful Women 887 Decorum 889

TED KOOSER (b. 1939) 890 Abandoned Farmhouse 891 The Blind Always Come as Such a Surprise 892 Tom Ball's Barn 892 Spring Plowing 893 Carrie 893

Contemporary Voices Historical and Critical Overview 896

ROBERT PINSKY (b. 1940) 906 Shirt 906 ABC 908 xxxii Contents BILLY COLLINS (b. 1941) 908 Embrace 909 Lowell, Mass. 910 The Dead 910

ROBERT HASS (b. 1941) 911 Black Mountain, Los Altos 912 Heroic Simile 912 Meditation at Lagunitas 913

LYN HEJINIAN (b. 1941) 914 From My Life 915 It was only a coincidence 915 Nostalgia is the elixir drained 916

CHARLES MARTIN (b. 1942) 917 Taken Up 918 E. S.L. 919 Metaphor of Grass in California 920

SHARON OLDS (b. 1942) 921 The Language of the Brag 922 The One Girl at the Boys' Party 923 Rites of Passage 924 Sex Without Love 924

LOUISE GLUCK (b. 1943) 925 The School Children 926 The Gift 926 Mock Orange 927 The Gold Lily 927 Circe's Power 928

MICHAEL PALMER (b. 1943) 928 Autobiography 929 All those words we once used . . . 930 Of this cloth doll which 931 Contents xxxiii

MARY KINZIE (b. 1944) 931 The Tattooer 932 , The Same Love 933

SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM (b. 1944) 933 To Li Po 934 My Father's Sadness 934 Learning to Love America 935

B. H. FAIRCHILD (b. 1945) 935 The Death of a Small Town 936 A Starlit Night 937

KAY RYAN (b. 1945) 938 Paired Things 939 Turtle 939 Bestiary 939 Chemise 940 Don't Look Back 940 Mockingbird 941

ADRIAN C. LOUIS (b. 1946) 941 Without Words 942 Looking for Judas 943

MARILYN NELSON (b. 1946) 943 The Ballad of Aunt Geneva 944 How I Discovered Poetry 945 Thus Far by Faith 945

RON SILLIMAN (b. 1946) 948 From The Chinese Notebook 949

AI (b. 1947) 951 Child Beater 951 xxxiv Contents

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA (b. 1947) 952 Facing It * 953 , Starlight Scope Myopia 954 Tu Do Street 955 Banking Potatoes 956

AMY UYEMATSU (b. 1947) 957 Deliberate 957 The Ten Million Flames of Los Angeles 958

DAVID LEHMAN (b. 1948) 959 Rejection Slip 960 First Lines 961

R. S. GWYNN (b. 1948) 961 Untitled 963 Body Bags 963 1-800 964

HEATHER McHUGH (b. 1948) 965 The Trouble with "In" 967 Earthmoving Malediction 968

TIMOTHY STEELE (b. 1948) 968 Sapphics Against Anger 969 The Sheets 970 Summer 971

WENDY ROSE (b. 1948) 971 Vanishing Point: Urban Indian 972 For the White Poets Who Would Be Indian 972

CAROLYN FORCHE (b. 1950) 973 The Morning Baking 974 The Colonel 975

DANA GIOIA (b. 1950) 975 The Next Poem 977 Planting a Sequoia 978 Contents xxxv WILLIAM LOGAN (b. 1950) 978 After a Lineby F. Scott Fitzgerald 979 , Small Bad Town 980

JORIE GRAHAM (b. 1951) 980 Mind 982 Over and Over Stitch 983 Erosion 983

JOY HARJO(b. 1951) 984 She Had Some Horses 985 Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On 987

ANDREW HUDGINS (b. 1951) 987 The Hereafter 988 Dead Christ 989 Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead 989

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER (b. 1952) 990 Quinceanera 991 The Lesson of the Sugarcane 991

RITA DOVE (b. 1952) 992 Adolescence—I 993 Adolescence—II 993 Adolescence—III 993 Daystar 994

ALICE FULTON (b. 1952) 995 What I Like 995 The Expense of Spirit 996

MARK JARMAN (b. 1952) 996 Ground Swell 997 Hands Folded 999 After the Praying 999

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE (b. 1952) 999 Famous 1000 The Traveling Onion 1001 xxxvi Contents MARK DOTY (b. 1953) 1001 Fog 1002 Homo Will Not Inherit 1004

GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG (b. 1953) 1007 The Paperweight 1008 Supernatural Love 1009

KIM ADDONIZIO (b. 1954) 1010 First Poem for You 1011 Stolen Moments 1011

FRANCISCO X. ALARCON (b. 1954) 1012 The X in My Name 1012 Frontera Border 1013

DAVID MASON (b. 1954) 1013 Spooning 1014 Song of the Powers 1018

BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZ (b. 1954) 1018 To the Desert 1019 Resurrections 1020

MARY JO SALTER (b. 1954) 1021 Welcome to Hiroshima 1022 The Age of Reason 1023

CATHY SONG (b. 1955) 1024 Beauty and Sadness 1025 Stamp Collecting 1026

JACQUELINE OSHEROW (b. 1956) 1027 Song for the Music in the Warsaw Ghetto 1028 Ghazal: Comet 1028

H. L. HLX (b. 1960) 1029 No Less Than Twenty-Six Distinct Necronyms 1030 Reasons 1030 Contents xxxvii

RAFAEL CAMPO (b. 1964) 1031 My Childhood in Another Part of the World, 1032 What the Body Told 1033

SHERMAN ALEXIE (b. 1966) 1033 Indian Boy Love Song (#2) 1034 From "The Native American Broadcasting System" 1034 ("I am the essence of powwow, I am") 1034 The Powwow at the End of the World 1035

MARISA DE LOS SANTOS (b. 1966) 1035 Perfect Dress 1036

CHRISTIAN WIMAN (b. 1966) 1037 What I Know 1037

LARISSA SZPORLUK (b. 1967) 1038 Vertigo 1038

DIANE THIEL (b. 1967) 1039 Memento Mori in Middle School 1040

KEVIN YOUNG (b. 1970) 1041 Quivira City Limits 1042

Selected Bibliographies 1044 Acknowledgments 1172 Index of Authors and Titles 1134