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The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
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The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

About the Book

Dazzling in its range, exhilarating in its immediacy and grace, a collection that 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 Glück, this anthology takes the full measure of our poetry's daring energies and its tender understandings.

Other poets include:
Sylvia Plath
James Merrill
Amy clampitt
Jorie Graham
W. S. Merwin
Charles Simic
Allen Ginsberg
Frank O'Hara
Anne Sexton
Robert Creeley
Sharon Olds
Mary Oliver
Robert Pinsky
Mark Strand
Denise Levertov
Richard Wilbur
May Swenson
Michael Palmer
Mark Doty
Yusef Komunyakaa
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The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 
A NOTE ON THE SECOND EDITION, 2003 

ROBERT LOWELL 
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket 
Memories of West Street and Lepke 
Man and Wife 
Skunk Hour 
The Mouth of the Hudson 
For the Union Dead 
Waking Early Sunday Morning 
History 
The Nihilist as Hero 
Reading Myself 
Obit 
Fishnet 
Dolphin 
Epilogue 

ELIZABETH BISHOP 
The Bight 
Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance 
At the Fishhouses 
The Shampoo 
Brazil, January 1, 1502 
Under the Window: Ouro Prêto 
The Armadillo 
Filling Station 
In the Waiting Room 
One Art 
Poem 

THEODORE ROETHKE 
Cuttings 
Root Cellar 
The Shape of the Fire 
The Waking 
I Knew a Woman 
In a Dark Time 

JOHN BERRYMAN 
The Moon and the Night and the Men 
from The Dream Songs (1, 4, 5, 14, 29, 46,
76, 77, 143, 257, 384) 

RANDALL JARRELL 
90 North 
Eighth Air Force 
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 
The Woman at the Washington Zoo 
Cinderella 
Next Day 
Well Water 

ROBERT PENN WARREN 
Masts at Dawn 
Birth of Love 
Rattlesnake Country 
Evening Hawk 

CHARLES OLSON 
The Kingfishers 

J. V. CUNNINGHAM 
For My Contemporaries 
To My Wife 
from ACentury of Epigrams (29, 53, 55, 62, 76) 

ROBERT HAYDEN 
Night, Death, Mississippi 
Frederick Douglass 
Middle Passage 

JEAN GARRIGUE 
Amsterdam Letter 
Cracked Looking Glass 
After Reading The Country of the Pointed Firs 

MAY SWENSON 
Teleology 
Unconscious Came a Beauty 
Stone Gullets 
Staying at Ed’s Place 
Strawberrying 

ROBERT DUNCAN 
APoem Beginning with a Line by Pindar 
Styx 

WILLIAM MEREDITH
The Illiterate 
Thoughts on One’s Head 
Consequences 
Country Stars 
The Jain Bird Hospital in Delhi 

HOWARD NEMEROV
Storm Windows
Writing
Money
The Dependencies
Learning the Trees 
Because You Asked About the Line
Between Prose and Poetry 
The War in the Air 

RICHARD WILBUR 
ABaroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra 
Looking into History 
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World 
Mind 
Advice to a Prophet 
Walking to Sleep 
Hamlen Brook 

MONA VAN DUYN 
Homework 
Into Mexico 
The Twins 
AView 
The Stream

HOWARD MOSS 
The Pruned Tree 
The Wars 
Ménage à Trois 
Elegy for My Sister 
Rules of Sleep 
Einstein’s Bathrobe 

JAMES DICKEY 
The Heaven of Animals 
The Hospital Window 
The Sheep Child 
The Strength of Fields 

ANTHONY HECHT 
AHill 
Third Avenue in Sunlight 
“More Light! More Light!” 
Peripeteia 
The Feast of Stephen 

JAMES SCHUYLER 
The Crystal Lithium 
Shimmer 
Korean Mums 

DENISE LEVERTOV 
Clouds 
The Ache of Marriage 
Intrusion 
Seeing for a Moment 
Prisoners 

RICHARD HUGO 
Graves at Elkhorn 
The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir 
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg 
The River Now 

EDGAR BOWERS 
An Afternoon at the Beach 
Amor Vincit Omnia 
from Autumn Shade (3, 6, 8, 9) 

CAROLYN KIZER 
AMuse of Water 
Amusing Our Daughters 
from Pro Femina (I, II) 

DONALD JUSTICE 
The Evening of the Mind 
Men at Forty 
The Tourist from Syracuse 
Variations on a Text by Vallejo 
The Assassination 
Mule Team and Poster 

FRANK O’HARA 
To the Harbormaster 
A Step Away from Them 
Meditations in an Emergency 
Why I Am Not a Painter 
The Day Lady Died 
Having a Coke with You 
Ave Maria 

DAVID WAGONER 
The Best Slow Dancer 
The Naval Trainees Learn How to Jump Overboard 
The Excursion of the Speech and Hearing Class 
Five Dawn Skies in November 
Making Camp 
The Source 

ROBERT CREELEY 
I Know a Man 
The Rescue 
Air: “The Love of a Woman” 
For Friendship 
For Love 
Again 
The World 

ALLEN GINSBERG 
from Howl (I) 
Sunflower Sutra 
My Sad Self
Wales Visitation 

W. D. SNODGRASS 
April Inventory 
from Heart’s Needle (2, 6) 
Mementos, 1 
ALocked House 

JAMES MERRILL 
A Renewal 
Voices from the Other World 
Days of 1964 
Willowware Cup 
Lost in Translation 

W. S. MERWIN 
The Animals 
Some Last Questions 
The River of Bees 
For the Anniversary of My Death 
The Asians Dying 
For a Coming Extinction 
The Night of the Shirts 
Bread 
St Vincent’s 

A. R. AMMONS 
He Held Radical Light 
Gravelly Run 
Corsons Inlet 
Reflective 
Terrain 
The City Limits 

JOHN ASHBERY 
Glazunoviana 
Soonest Mended 
As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat 
Pyrography 
And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name 
Syringa 
My Erotic Double 

JAMES WRIGHT 
At the Executed Murderer’s Grave 
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio 
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm
in Pine Island, Minnesota 
Beginning 
ABlessing 
In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest
Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has Been Condemned 
AWinter Daybreak Above Venice 

GALWAY KINNELL 
Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond 
Last Songs 
The Bear 
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps 
The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak 
The Vow 
The Man on the Hotel Room Bed 

ANNE SEXTON 
Her Kind 
Music Swims Back to Me 
The Truth the Dead Know 
The Starry Night 
With Mercy for the Greedy 
Wanting to Die 
The Room of My Life 

PHILIP LEVINE 
The Horse 
They Feed They Lion 
Belle Isle, 1949 
You Can Have It 
Rain Downriver 
Sweet Will 

IRVING FELDMAN 
Family History 
The Dream 
from All of Us Here 

JOHN HOLLANDER 
The Night Mirror 
from Powers of Thirteen (3, 29, 69, 82, 87, 130) 
Swan and Shadow 
The Mad Potter 

RICHARD HOWARD 
Venetian Interior, 1889 
At the Monument to Pierre Louÿs 

ADRIENNE RICH 
Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law 
Planetarium 
The Burning of Paper Instead of Children 
Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff 
For the Record 
For an Album 

GARY SNYDER 
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout 
Riprap 
Burning Island 
The Bath 
I Went into the Maverick Bar 
Axe Handles 

SYLVIA PLATH 
The Colossus 
The Hanging Man 
Morning Song 
Daddy 
Fever 103° 
Ariel 
Lady Lazarus 
Edge 
Words 

MARK STRAND 
Keeping Things Whole 
Coming to This 
The Prediction 
“The Dreadful Has Already Happened” 
The Story of Our Lives 
Where Are the Waters of Childhood? 

CHARLES WRIGHT 
Stone Canyon Nocturne 
Spider Crystal Ascension 
Clear Night 
Homage to Paul Cézanne 
The Other Side of the River 

AUDRE LORDE 
Coal 
Movement Song 
Afterimages 

MARY OLIVER 
Rain 
When Death Comes 
Whelks 
Hawk 

JAY WRIGHT 
The Homecoming Singer 
Benjamin Banneker Sends His Almanac to Thomas Jefferson 
Journey to the Place of Ghosts 

C. K. WILLIAMS 
It Is This Way with Men 
The Gas Station 
Tar 
Alzheimer’s: The Wife 

CHARLES SIMIC 
Tapestry 
My Shoes 
Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites 
Watermelons 
Eyes Fastened with Pins 
Empire of Dreams 
Prodigy 
from The World Doesn’t End 

MICHAEL S. HARPER 
Dear John, Dear Coltrane 
Grandfather 
Nightmare Begins Responsibility 
The Militance of a Photograph in the Passbook
of a Bantu Under Detention 

FRANK BIDART 
Another Life 
Happy Birthday 
The Sacrifice 

ROBERT PINSKY 
Poem About People 
Dying 
The Hearts 
Shirt 

ROBERT HASS 
Heroic Simile 
Meditation at Lagunitas 
Between the Wars 
Misery and Splendor 

AMY CLAMPITT 
Beach Glass 
Imago 
Stacking the Straw 
Medusa 

DAVE SMITH
Elegy in an Abandoned Boatyard 
The Roundhouse Voices 
Lake Drummond Dream 

MARILYN HACKER 
from Taking Notice (7, 11, 14, 25) 
Ballad of Ladies Lost and Found 
Nights of 1964—66: The Old Reliable 

WILLIAM MATTHEWS 
Nabokov’s Blues 
Onions 
107th and Amsterdam 
Dire Cure 

SHARON OLDS 
You Kindly 
The Promise 
The Glass 
The Feelings 

LOUISE GLÜCK
Messengers 
The Drowned Children 
The Garden 
Palais des Arts 
Mock Orange 
Eros 

SANDRA MCPHERSON 
Black Soap 
The Microscope in Winter 
Streamers 

MICHAEL PALMER 
H 
“or anything resembling it” 
Erolog
The White Notebook 

ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT
The Spire 
The Lotus Flowers 
Song and Story 
Winter Field 

KAY RYAN 
Paired Things 
Mirage Oases 
ACat/A Future 
The Old Cosmologists 
That Will to Divest
Drops in the Bucket 

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA 
Providence 
Camouflaging the Chimera 
Facing It 
Ode to the Maggot 
Día de los Muertos 

HEATHER MCHUGH 
The Typewriter’s the Kind 
From 20,000 Feet
Numberless
Auto 

EDWARD HIRSCH 
Fast Break 
AShort Lexicon of Torture in the Eighties 
My Father’s Back 

JORIE GRAHAM 
Over and Over Stitch
San Sepolcro
Orpheus and Eurydice
Ebbtide

RITA DOVE
Adolescence–II
Parsley
Canary

MARK DOTY 
Broadway
Brilliance
A Display of Mackerel 
Door to the River

GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG
The Paperweight 
Signs
Supernatural Love 

HENRI COLE 
Chiffon Morning 
Peonies 
You Come When I Call You
Black Mane

LI-YOUNG LEE
This Hour and What Is Dead 
Pillow
One Heart 
Dwelling

CARL PHILLIPS
The Compass
No Kingdom 
From the Devotions
Revision

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

About the Author

J. D. McClatchy
J. D. McClatchy (b. 1945) was the author of eight collections of poetry and three collections of prose. He edited numerous other books, including The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, and wrote a number of opera libretti that have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, and elsewhere. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where he served as president from 2009 to 2012. McClatchy taught at Yale University and long served as editor of The Yale Review. He died in April, 2018. More by J. D. McClatchy
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