Foreword -- Introduction -- Acknowledgments -- Poems: -- 2010- And 1999-2000: W S Merwin (1927- ): -- To The Words -- Separation -- Way to the river -- When you go away -- Asians dying -- For a coming extinction -- Fox sleep -- Before the flood -- Good people -- To the consolations of philosophy -- Good night -- Rain light -- Alba -- Forgotten fountain -- 2008-2010: Kay Ryan (1945- ): -- Things Shouldn't Be So Hard -- This life -- Flamingo watching -- Force -- Paired things -- Doubt -- Mirage oases -- That vase of lilacs -- Turtle -- Relief -- Plain ordinary steel needle can float on pure water -- Hundred bolts of satin -- Crown -- Home to roost -- Sharks' teeth -- Hide and seek -- Odd blocks -- 2007-2008: Charles Simic (1938- ): -- My Weariness Of Epic Proportions -- My mother was a braid of black smoke -- I was stolen by the gypsies -- My father loved the strange books of Andre Breton -- Evening talk -- In the library -- Cameo appearance -- Address with exclamation points -- Entertaining the canary -- Against winter -- Empire of dreams -- My beloved -- Prodigy -- Return of the invisible man -- Love poem -- Couple at Coney Island -- Listen -- 2006-2007: Donald Hall (1928- ): -- White Apples -- Gold -- To a waterfowl -- Maple syrup -- Names of horses -- Ship pounding -- Her garden -- Ardor -- Kill the day -- Affirmation -- Safe sex -- Nymph and shepherd -- After love -- 2004-2006: Ted Kooser (1939- ): -- So This Is Nebraska -- Selecting a reader -- Carrie -- My grandfather dying -- Highway 30 -- Flying at night -- Fan in the window -- December 15 -- February 10 -- February 21 -- Tattoo -- At the cancer clinic -- Jar of buttons -- Grasshoppers -- 2003-2004: Louise Gluck (1943- ): -- Mock Orange -- Drowned children -- Novel -- Celestial music -- First memory -- Penelope's song -- Telemachus' detachment -- Telemachus' guilt -- Telemachus' fantasy -- Nest -- Eros -- Time -- Memoir -- October -- At the river -- 2001-2003: Billy Collins (1941- ): -- Litany -- Advice to writers -- Introduction to poetry -- Pinup -- Man in space -- Portrait of the reader with a bowl of cereal -- Picnic, lightning -- Forgetfulness -- Sonnet -- Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house -- Names -- Breather -- Searching -- Pornography -- 2000-2001 And 1974-1976: Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006): -- Halley's Comet -- I dreamed that I was old -- Waltzer in the house -- War against the trees -- Old cracked tune -- Portrait -- King of the river -- Knot -- Passing through -- My mother's pears -- Touch me -- Promise me -- System -- Three floors -- Wellfleet whale -- 1997-2000: Robert Pinsky (1940- ): -- Samurai Song -- Doctor frolic -- Ralegh's prizes -- Shirt -- ABC -- To television -- Jersey rain -- Poem of disconnected parts -- Forgetting -- Stupid meditation on peace -- XYZ -- First things to hand -- Last robot song -- 1995-1997: Robert Hass (1941- ): -- Meditation At Lagunitas -- Measure -- Winter morning in Charlottesville -- Child naming flowers -- Museum -- Misery and splendor -- Happiness -- Dragonflies mating -- Sonnet -- Supple wreath of myrtle -- Futures in lilacs -- Etymology -- Time and materials -- Then time -- Bush's war -- 1993-1995: Rita Dove (1952- ): -- This Life -- Dusting -- Weathering out -- Daystar -- Teach us to number our days -- House slave -- My mother enters the work force -- Canary -- Persephone, falling -- Golden oldie -- Wiring home -- Ta ta cha cha -- Bridgetower -- Ach, Wien -- 1992-1993: Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004): -- Death By Aesthetics -- Gentle snorer -- Sonnet for minimalists -- Late loving -- For William Clinton, president-elect -- Burning of Yellowstone -- Falling in love at sixty-five -- Earth tremors felt in Missouri -- Block -- Kind of music -- Notes from a suburban heart -- Evening stroll in the suburbs -- 1991-1992: Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996): -- To The President-Elect -- Six years later -- Anno Domini -- Autumn in Norenskaia -- Second Christmas by the shore -- from A Part of Speech ("I was born and grew up in the Baltic marshland") -- Tornfallet -- Love song -- Folk tune -- Bosnia tune -- Once more by the Potomac -- 1990-1991: Mark Strand (1934- ): -- Keeping Things Whole -- Eating poetry -- Remains -- Coming to this -- Coming of light -- Lines for winter -- For Jessica, my daughter -- Pot roast -- Continuous life -- Piece of the storm -- Night, the porch -- Our masterpiece is the private life -- View -- Black Sea -- My name -- Mirror -- 1988-1990 And 1963-1964: Howard Nemerov (1920-1999): -- Money -- Storm windows -- Blue swallows -- Vacuum -- To D-, death by her own hand -- I only am escaped alone to tell thee -- Goose fish -- Style -- Boy with book of knowledge -- On an occasion of national mourning -- To the Congress of the United States, entering its third century -- Makers -- On being asked for a peace poem -- Elegy for a nature poet -- 1987-1988: Richard Wilbur (1921- ): -- Blackberries For Amelia -- Sirens -- Clearness -- Simile for her smile -- Grasshopper -- Someone talking to himself -- Love calls us to the things of this world -- Piazza di Spagna, early morning -- Beacon -- Boy at the window -- All these birds -- Pasture poem -- Measuring worm -- Terza Rima -- 1986-1987 And 1944-1945: Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989): -- Patriotic Tour And Postulate Of Joy -- Bearded oaks -- Revelation -- Founding fathers, nineteenth-century style, Southeast USA -- Modification of landscape -- Ways of day -- World is a parable -- Evening hawk -- Unless -- Mortal limit -- Rumor at twilight -- Little girl wakes early -- Loose shutter -- 1985-1986: Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000): -- We Real Cool -- Kitchenette building -- Song in the front yard -- Sadie and Maud -- Last quatrain of the ballad of Emmett Till -- Ballad of Rudolph Reed -- When you have forgotten Sunday: the love story -- Boy breaking glass -- Second sermon on the warpland -- Crazy woman -- Lovely love -- Of Robert Frost -- Langston Hughes -- Medgar Evers -- 1984-1985: Robert Fitzgerald (1910-1985) -- July In Indiana: -- Song after campion -- Song for September -- Horae -- Cobb would have caught it -- Lightness in Autumn -- Aerial -- Metamorphosis -- Patrum propositum -- Borges's love's priority.

1982-1984: Anthony Hecht (1923-2004): -- Hill -- Letter -- Darkness and the light are both alike to thee -- It out-Herods Herod pray you, avoid it -- More light! More light! -- Overview -- Curriculum vitae -- Book of Yolek -- Death the painter -- Certain slant -- 1981-1982: Maxine Kumin (1925- ): -- Credo -- Poem for my son -- Spree -- Calling -- Hay -- Fat pets on -- Noah, at six months -- Deja vu -- Our ground time here will be brief -- Skinnydipping with William Wordsworth -- Fox on his back -- Seven caveats in May -- Looking back in my eighty-first year -- Revisionist dream -- 1978-1980: William Meredith (1919-2007): -- Mild-Spoken Citizen Finally Writes To The White House -- Airman's virtue -- Envoi -- Illiterate -- Major work -- Assent to wildflowers -- Wreck of the thresher -- Winter verse for his sister -- Accidents of birth -- Poem about morning -- In memory of Robert Frost -- For two lovers in the year 2075 in the Canadian woods -- What I remember the writers telling me when I was young -- 1976-1978: Robert Hayden (1913-1980): -- Those Winter Sundays -- Diver -- Homage to the empress of the blues -- Whipping -- Middle passage -- Frederick Douglass -- Mystery boy looks for kin in Nashville -- Words in the mourning time -- Plague of starlings -- Letter from Phillis Wheatley -- Names -- Islands -- Bone-flower elegy -- 1973-1974: Daniel Hoffman (1923- ): -- Seals In Penobscot Bay -- In the days of Rin-Tin-Tin -- Power -- from Brotherly Love, 34 ("Silence, more") -- from Brotherly Love, 61 ("on city hall, above our lights") -- Reasons -- from Middens of the Tribe, 42 ("Father dead and buried, the old house sold-") -- Violence -- Owed to dejection -- 1971-1973: Josephine Jacobsen (1908-2003): -- First Woman -- Lines to a poet -- Landscape finally with human figure -- Gentle reader -- How we learn -- Language as an escape from the discrete -- Arrivals -- Monosyllable -- Over timberline -- Dogs -- Blue-eyed exterminator -- Hourglass -- Edge -- 1970-1971: William Stafford (1914-1993): -- Objector -- Introduction to some poems -- Ask me -- Level light -- Ritual to read to each other -- Traveling through the dark -- Little ways that encourage good fortune -- When I met my muse -- Security -- For my young friends who are afraid -- Just thinking -- 1968-1970: William Jay Smith (1918- ): -- Pumpkin Field -- Now touch the air softly -- Persian miniature -- Room in the villa -- Morels -- Winter morning -- World below the window -- American primitive -- Atoll -- Invitation to Ground Zero -- 1966-1968: James Dickey (1923-1997): -- In The Child's Night -- Sheep child -- Adultery -- Heaven of animals -- In the tree house at night -- Hospital window -- Cherrylog Road -- Drinking from a helmet -- 1965-1966: Stephen Spender (1909-1995): -- What I Expected -- I think continually of those who were truly great -- Not palaces -- Awaking -- Word -- Empty house -- Elementary school class room in a slum -- One more new botched beginning -- 1964-1965 And 1984-1985: Reed Whittemore (1919- ): -- Clamming -- Preface to an unwritten text -- Spring, etc -- Radio under the bed -- Cultural conference -- Philadelphia vireo -- What was it like? -- Let it blow -- 1961-1963: Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977): -- Infidelity -- Jerusalem delivered -- Scarcely spring -- Six epigrams -- Summer storm -- Upon Washington Bridge -- Words for a jig -- 1959-1961: Richard Eberhart (1904-2005): -- 21st Century Man -- Groundhog -- Fury of aerial bombardment -- Hard structure of the world -- Swallows return -- As if you had never been -- Gnat on my paper -- Man's type -- Long term suffering -- You think they are permanent but they pass -- Coast of Maine -- 1958-1959: Robert Frost (1874-1963): -- Gift Outright: -- Pasture -- Mending wall -- Road not taken -- Oven bird -- Birches -- Fire and ice -- Dust of snow -- Nothing gold can stay -- Stopping by woods on a snowy evening -- Design -- Silken tent -- Never again would birds' song be the same -- 1956-1958: Randall Jarrell (1914-1965): -- 1945: Death Of The Gods -- Girl in a library -- Children selecting books in a library -- Snow-leopard -- Eighth Air Force -- Pilot from the carrier -- Sick nought -- Truth -- Well water -- Refugees -- Woman at the Washington Zoo.

1952: William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): -- Danse Russe -- Red wheelbarrow -- It is a living coral -- Poem -- This is just to say -- Item -- Locust tree in flower -- Term -- Last words of my English grandmother -- Dance -- Sort of a song -- Maneuver -- Mind hesitant -- Sparrow -- 1950-1952: Conrad Aiken (1889-1973): -- Habeas Corpus Blues -- Exile -- from Time in the Rock, IV ("Woman, woman, let us say these things to each other") -- from Time in the Rock, XLVII ("Not with the noting of a private hate") -- from Time in the Rock, LXXVII ("The great one who collects the sea shells I beheld") -- Whippoorwill -- Music -- Summer -- When you are not surprised -- Grasshopper -- 1949-1950: Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979): -- Sandpiper -- Imaginary iceberg -- Casabianca -- Unbeliever -- Fish -- At the fishhouses -- View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress -- Letter to N Y -- Shampoo -- Song for the rainy season -- Manners -- In the waiting room -- Sestina -- One art -- Five flights up -- It is marvellous to wake up together -- Dear, my compass -- 1948-1949: Leonie Adams (1899-1988): -- Magnificat In Little -- Recollection of the wood -- Summer image -- Sundown -- Early waking -- Song from a country fair -- Mount -- Thought's end -- 1947-1948: Robert Lowell (1917-1977): -- Man And Wife -- Exile's return -- Inauguration Day: January 1953 -- Father's bedroom -- Skunk hour -- Water -- For the union dead -- Old flame -- Fall 1961 -- July in Washington -- New York 1962: fragment -- Night sweat -- Randall Jarrell 2 -- Nihilist as hero -- Symptoms -- 1946-1947: Karl Shapiro (1913-2000): -- Lower The Standard -- Fly -- Poet -- Elegy for a dead soldier -- Living rooms of my neighbors -- Editing poetry -- Manhole covers -- Drawerful of eyeglasses -- Man on wheels -- Piano tuner's wife -- 1945-1946: Louise Bogan (1897-1970): -- Daemon -- -- Medusa -- Knowledge -- Second song -- Several voices out of a cloud -- Question in a field -- Solitary observation brought back from a Sojourn in hell -- Dream -- Cartography -- Dragon fly -- Night -- 1943-1944: Allen Tate (1899-1979): -- Ode To The Confederate Dead -- Mr Pope -- Wolves -- Mediterranean -- Aeneas at Washington -- Meaning of life -- To the Lacedemonians -- Swimmers -- Ode to our young pro-consuls of the air -- Winter mask -- 1937-1941: Joseph Auslander (1897-1965): -- Protest -- Dawn at the rain's edge -- Home-bound -- Upper Park Avenue -- Severus to Tiberius greatly ennuye -- Testament -- Target for tonight -- Notes and sources -- Permissions acknowledgments -- Index.