Preface
Acknowledgements
MARY CORNELIA HARTSHORNE (c. 1910-)
Fallen Leaves
Hiss of Doon
Wind in Mexico
CHARLES HENRI FORD (1910-2002)
Plaint
Flag of Ecstasy
Pastoral of Pavlik
CHARLES OLSON (1910-1970)
Variations Done for Gerald Van
De Wiele
Maximus, to himself
Cole's Island
ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)
The Fish
The Man-Moth
At the Fishhouses
Filling Station
Questions of Travel
The Armadillo
In the Waiting Room
Pink Dog
Crusoe in England
One Art
WILLIAM EVERSON
(1912-1994)
The Making of the Cross
A Canticle to the Waterbirds
TILLIE LERNER OLSEN (1912-2007)
I Want You Women Up North To Know
ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980)
Middle Passage
Runagate Runagate
A Letter from Phillis Wheatley
Those Winter
Sundays
Night, Death, Mississippi
Aunt Jemima of the Ocean Waves
No. 1 (from Elegies for Paradise Valley)
The Dogwood Trees
O Daedalus, Fly Away Home
WELDON KEES (1914-1955)
June 1940
Travels in North America
RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965)
The Death
of the Ball Turret Gunner
A Front
Losses
Second Air Force
Protocols
JAPANESE AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMP HAIKU (1942-1944)
Shiho Okamoto (Being arrested)
Sadayo Taniguchi (Hand-cuffed and taken away)
Kyotaro Komuro (Lingering summer heat)
Taro Katay,
(Shouldering)
Komuro (Passed guard tower)
Okamoto (In the shade of summer sun)
Shonan Suzuki (Withered grass on ground)
Hakuro Wada (Young grass red and shriveled)
Hyakuissei Okamoto (Dandelion has bloomed)
Shizuku Uyemaruko (On certain days)
Wada (Released
seagull)
Ryokuin Matsui (Sprinkling water outside)
Komuro (Want to be with children)
Wada (Even the croaking of frogs)
Hangetsu Tsunekawa (Sentry at main gate)
Shokoshi Saga (Thin shadow of tule reed)
Tokuji Hirai (Looking at summer moon)
Suzuki (Moon shadows on
internment camp)
Hirai (Early moon has set)
Suiko Matsushita (Rain shower from mountain)
Kyokusui (Thorns of the iron fence)
Neiji Ozawa (Desert rain falling)
Senbinshi Takaoka (Frosty morning)
Oshio (Stepping through snow)
Jyosha Yamada (Black clouds instantly
shroud)
Takaoka (Winter wind)
Hekisamei Matsuda (Doll without a head)
Sei Sagara (Suddenly awakened)
Hyakuissei Okamoto (Jeep patrolling slowly)
Shizuku Uyemaruko (Grieving within)
Okamoto (In the sage brush)
Matsushita (Oh shells--)
JOHN BERRYMAN
(1914-1972)
from The Dream Songs
1 Huffy Henry
4 Filling her compact & delicious body
5 Henry sats
14 Life, friends
22 Of 1826
29 There sat down, once
40 I'm scared a lonely
45 He stared at ruin
46 I am, outside
55 Peter's not friendly
76 Henry's
Confession
382 At Henry's bier
384 The marker slants
WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914-1993)
Traveling Through the Dark
At the Bomb Testing Site
At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border
The Indian Cave Jerry Ramsey Found
DUDLEY RANDALL
(1914-2000)
Ballad of Birmingham
A Different Image
JOY DAVIDMAN (1915-1960)
This Woman
For The Nazis
MARGARET WALKER (1915-1998)
For My People
RUTH STONE (1915-2011)
In an Iridescent Time
I Have Three
Daughters
Pokeberries
American Milk
From the Arboretum
Drought in the Lower Fields
Some Things You'll Need to Know/ Before You Join the Union
THOMAS McGRATH (1916-1990)
Deep South
Crash Report
First Book of Genesis According to the Diplomats
Ars
Poetica: Or: Who Lives in the Ivory Tower?
A Little Song About Charity
Against the False Magicians
After the Beat Generation
Ode for the American Dead in Asia
Poem at the Winter Solstice
ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977)
Inauguration Day: January 1953
A Mad Negro
Soldier Confined at Munich
Commander Lowell
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
Man and Wife
Memories of West Street and Lepke
Skunk Hour
For the Union Dead
The Mouth of the Hudson
July in Washington
The March I
The March II
Central
Park
Epilogue
GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000)
a song in the front yard
of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery
Gay Chaps at the Bar
We Real Cool
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
The Blackstone Rangers
Malcolm X
Young Afrikans
The Boy Died in My
Alley
To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals
To the Diaspora
WILLIAM BRONK (1918-1999)
At Tikal
The Mayan Glyphs Unread
I Thought It Was Harry
Where It Ends
Left Alone
ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988)
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a
Meadow
My Mother Would Be a Falconress
The Torso (Passages 18)
Up Rising (Passages 25)
BARBARA GUEST (1920-2006)
from Quilts(from "Couch of Space")
Words
Twilight Polka Dots
AARON KRAMER (1921-1997)
Denmark Vesey
RICHARD WILBUR (b.
1921)
The Pardon
A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra
Beasts
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Advice to a Prophet
Children of Darkness
MONA VAN DUYN (1921-2004)
Toward a Definition of Marriage
JACK KEROUAC (1922-1969)
The
Perfect Love of Mind Essence
selected Haiku
JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997)
The Sheep Child
Falling
DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-1997)
The Ache of Marriage
Olga Poems
What Were They Like?
Life at War
ANTHONY HECHT (1923-2004)
A Hill
"More Light!
More Light!"
The Book of Yolek
BOB KAUFMAN (1925-1986)
The Biggest Fisherman
Crootey Songo
No More Jazz at Alcatraz
from Jail Poems, Nos. 1-3
MAXINE KUMIN (b. 1925)
Voices from Kansas
Saga
Oblivion
Pantoum, With Swan
With William Meredith
in Bulgaria
DONALD JUSTICE (1925-2004)
An Old Fashioned Devil
The Wall
Early Poems
Absences
Presences
PAUL BLACKBURN (1926-1971)
At the Crossroad
At the Well
FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966)
from Alma
Poem (The eager note on my door)
A
Step Away From Them
The Day Lady Died
Why I Am Not a Painter
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing the Delaware At The Museum of Modern Art
Thinking of James Dean
Music
Cornkind
Poem (Lana Turner Has
Collapsed)
JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995)
An Urban Convalescence
The Broken Home
Willowware Cup
Lost in Translation
ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997)
Love Poem On Theme By Whitman
Howl
A Supermarket in California
Who to Be Kind To
Rain-wet Asphalt Heat,
Garbage Curbed Cans Overflowing
Father Death-Blues
Sphincter
ROBERT CREELEY (1926-2005)
After Lorca
I Know a Man
The Flower
For Love
America
Age
ROBERT BLY (b. 1926)
Counting Small-Boned Bodies
Hearing Gary Snyder Read
A.R. AMMONS
(1926-2001)
Corsons Inlet
Gravelly Run
Coon Song
JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980)
Saint Judas
Beginnning
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
A Blessing
A Centenary Ode: Inscribed to
Little Crow, Leader of the
Sioux Rebellion in Minnesota, 1862
JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927)
"They Dream Only of America"
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
Mixed Feelings
Street Musicians
Syringa
Daffy Duck in Hollywood
Paradoxes and Oxymorons
The
Problem of Anxiety
Dull Mauve
A Kind of Chill
Spooks Run Wild
Marine Shadow
Words to That Effect
GALWAY KINNELL (b. 1927)
The Porcupine
The Bear
The Vow
W.S. MERWIN (b. 1927)
The Drunk in the Furnace
It Is March
Caesar
The
Room
December Among the Vanished
For the Anniversary of My Death
When The War Is Over
The Asians Dying
For A coming Extinction
Looking For Mushrooms At Sunrise
The Gardens of Zuni
Beginning
The Horse
Sun and Rain
Berryman
Daylight
The Name of the
Air
Far Along in the Story
Worn Words
ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974)
Her Kind
The Truth The Dead Know
And One for My Dame
Jesus Asleep
Jesus Raises Up the Harlot
The Room of My Life
PHILIP LEVINE (b. 1928)
For Fran
The Horse
Animals Are
Passing From Our Lives
Belle Isle, 1949
They Feed They Lion
Francisco, I'll Bring You Red Carnations
Fear and Fame
On the Meeting of Garc¡a Lorca and Hart Crane
ADRIENNE RICH (1929-2012)
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
from Shooting Script
Trying to Talk With a
Man
Diving into the Wreck
Twenty-One Love Poems
Power
from An Atlas of the Difficult World
XIII. (Dedications) I know you are reading this poem
Behind the Motel
Hotel
DEREK WALCOTT (b. 1930)
A Far Cry from Africa
Laventille
The Fortunate
Traveller
from Omeros
Book One, Chapter 1
GARY SYNDER (b. 1930)
Riprap
Beneath My Hand and Eye the Distant Hills. Your Body
I Went Into the Maverick Bar
Straight-Creek--Great Burn
Axe Handles
GREGORY CORSO
(1930-2001)
Marriage
Bomb
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931-1991)
Haiku 1, 4, 9
Hard Rock Returns to Prison From the Hospital For the Criminal Insane
The Idea of Ancestry
A Poem For Myself
For Malcolm, A Year After
Television Speaks
For Black Poets Who Think
of Suicide
SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)
The Colossus
The Bee Meeting
The Arrival of the Bee Box
Stings
The Swarm
Wintering
Daddy
Ariel
Lady Lazarus
HENRY DUMAS (1934-1968)
Son of Msippi
Kef 24
Kef 16
Fish
Knees of a Natural
Man
Low Down Dog Blues
Black Star Line
Peas
Yams
AMIRI BARAKA (Leroi Jones) (b. 1934)
SOS
Black Art
When We'll Worship Jesus
N. SCOTT MOMADAY (b. 1934)
Plainview: 3
Buteo Regalis
Crows in a Winter Composition
Carriers of the Dream
Wheel
Rings of Bone
The Stalker
Purple (from The Colors of Night)
The Burning
December 29, 1980
The Shield That Came Back
The Snow Mare
To An Aged Bear
A Benign Self-Portrait
MARK STRAND (b. 1934)
The Prediction
Where Are the Waters of
Childhood?
AUDRE LORDE (1934-1992)
from Coal
Sisters in Arms
Outlines
Call
KATHLEEN FRASER (b. 1935)
In Commemoration of the Visit of Foreign Commercial Representatives to Japan, 1947
CHARLES WRIGHT (b. 1935)
Spider Crystal Ascension
Clear
Night
Homage to Paul Cézanne
MARY OLIVER (b. 1935)
Morning Walk
At Great Pond
Black Snake This Time
JAYNE CORTEZ (1936-2012)
I Am New York City
Do You Think
LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936-2010)
I Am Accused of Tending To the Past
at the
cemetery,/ walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989
Reply
the message of crazy horse
poem to my uterus
to my last period
brothers
SUSAN HOWE (b. 1937)
The Falls Fight
Hope Atherton's Wanderings
MICHAEL S. HARPER (b. 1938)
Song: I Want a
Witness
Blue Ruth: America
Brother John
American History
We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper
Reuben, Reuben
Deathwatch
Dear John, Dear Coltrane
ISHMAEL REED (b. 1938)
I am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra
Oakland Blues
LAWSON FUSAO
INADA (b. 1938)
from Listening Images
ROBERT PINSKY (b. 1940)
Dying
The Unseen
Shirt
Veni, Creator Spiritus
WELTON SMITH (1940-2006)
Malcolm
WILLIAM HEYEN (b. 1940)
Riddle
from Crazy Horse in Stillness:
Forces
White &
Gold
One World
Bone & Velvet
Mother
The Count
Surveyors
Rot
V
Resolve
Treaty
Snowbirds
The Slowing
The Paper It's Written On
The Tooth
Wakan Tanka
Disequilibrium
Eclipse
JUDY GRAHN (b. 1940)
I Have Come to Claim Marilyn
Monroe's Body
Vietnamese Woman Speaking to an American Soldier
Carol
Plainsong
The Woman Whose Head is On Fire
CAROLYN M. RODGERS (1941-2010)
how i got ovah
and when the revolution came
mama's God
ROBERT HASS (b. 1941)
Rusia en 1931
A Story
About the Body
Forty Something
Sonnet
LYN HEJINIAN (b. 1941)
from My Life
A pause, a rose, something on paper
from The Distance
Nos. III, XIX, XXIV, XXX, XXXII, XXXVII
SHARON OLDS (b. 1942)
The Pope's Penis
Ideographs
Photograph of the
Girl
Things That Are Worse Than Death
The Waiting
His Father's Cadaver
Known to Be Left
Left-Wife Goose
LOUISE GLECK (b. 1943)
The Drowned Children
Vespers ("You thought we didn't know")
Vespers ("More than you love me, very possibly")
The Wild
Iris
from Meadowlands:
Penelope's Song
Quiet Evening
Parable of the King
Parable of the Hostages
Circe's Power
Circe's Grief
Reunion
Telemachus' Burden
Before the Storm
A Village Life
MICHAEL PALMER (b. 1943)
Song of the Round Man
All
those words
I Have Answers to All of Your Questions
Fifth Prose
Autiobiography
PAUL VIOLI (1944-2011)
Index
Tanka
A Moveable Snack
THOMAS JAMES (1946-1974)
Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh
Dissecting a Pig
RON SILLIMAN (b.
1946)
from Ketjak
from Sunset Debris
The Chinese Notebook
from Toner
ADRIAN C. LOUIS (b. 1946)
Dust World
Wakinyan
Without Words
Coyote Night
How Verdell and Dr. Zhivago Disassembled the Soviet Union
Wanbli Gleska Win
Looking for Judas
A
Colossal American Copulation
Petroglyphs of Serena
Jesus Finds His Ghost Shirt
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA (b. 1947)
Tu Do Street
Prisoners
Communiqué
The Dog Act
The Nazi Doll
Fog Galleon
Work
Ai (1947-2010)
The Root Eater
Twenty-Year
Marriage
The German Army, Russia, 1943
The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer
WENDY ROSE (b. 1948)
Truganinny
TIMOTHY STEELE (b. 1948)
Daybreak, Benedict Canyon
April 27, 1937
ALBERT GOLDBARTH (b. 1948)
Swan
Coinages: A Fairy
Tale
1400
C. D. WRIGHT (b. 1949)
Obedience of the Corpse
from JUST WHISTLE:
THE BODY, ALIVE, NOT DEAD BUT DORMANT
BECAUSE CONDITIONS ARE IDEAL FOR CROWING
AND NOTHING
THE CORPSE WAS IN THE BED
ON THE MORN OF
A PARTITION SEPARATES IT FROM OTHER
BODIES
OVER EVERYTHING
Song of the Gourd
FROM COOLING TIME:
only the crossing counts
until words turn to moss
What Would Oppen Say,
Dear Dying Town
JESSICA HAGEDORN (b. 1949)
Ming the Merciless
CHARLES BERNSTEIN (b. 1950)
You
from Foreign
Body Sensation
The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree
Riddle of the Fat Faced Man
The Boy Soprano
JORIE GRAHAM (b. 1950)
History
From the New World
RAY A. YOUNG BEAR (b. 1950)
In Viewpoint: Poem for 14 Catfish and The Town of Tama, Iowa
It is the Fish-faced
Boy Who Struggles
CAROLYN FORCH (b. 1950)
The Colonel
The Lightkeeper
Morning on the Island
The Museum of Stones
ANDREW HUDGINS (b. 1951)
At Chancellorsville: The Battle of the Wilderness
The Summer of the Drought
He Imagines His Wife
Dead
GARRETT KAORU HONGO (b. 1951)
Ancestral Graves, Kahuku
Kubota to Miguel Hernandez in Heaven, Leupp, Arizona, 1942
RITA DOVE (b. 1952)
Parsley
Receiving the Stigmata
JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA (b. 1952)
Mi T¡o Baca El Poeta De Socorro
The
Painters
ALBERTO RÍOS (b. 1952)
Madre Sof¡a
What Happened to Me.
ANITA ENDREZZE (b. 1952)
Birdwatching at Fan Lake
Return of the Wolves
La Morena and Her Beehive Hairdo
ANA CASTILLO (b. 1953)
Seduced by Natassja Kinski
Hummingbird
Heart
MARK DOTY (b. 1953)
Homo Will Not Inherit
The Embrace
HARRYETTE MULLEN (b. 1953)
from Trimmings
from S*PeRM**K*T
LOUISE ERDRICH (b. 1954)
Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
Dear John Wayne
The Fence
LORNA DEE CERVANTES (b.
1954)
Refuge Ship
Poema para los Californios Muertos
Starfish
SANDRA CISNEROS (b. 1954)
Little Clown, My Heart
THYLIAS MOSS (b. 1954)
Fullness
There Will Be Animals
The Lynching
Interpretation of a Poem by
Frost
Ambition
Crystals
PATRICIA SMITH (b. 1955)
Blond White Women
Skinhead
From Blood Dazzler
from Tankas:
Never has there been/a wind like this
Go, they said. Go. Go.
Man on the TV Say
Company's Coming
Voodoo II: Money
Voodoo V: Enemy Be
Gone
from What to Tweak
Stifle the Stinking, shut down the cameras
Back Home
Motown Crown
MARILYN CHIN (b. 1955)
How I Got That Name
Altar
JANICE N. HARRINGTON (b. 1956)
Falling
If She Had Lived
SESSHU FOSTER (b. 1957)
We're
caffinated by rain inside concrete underpasses
You'll be fucked up
Look and look again, will he glance up all of a sudden
I'm always grateful no one hears this terrible racket
The Japanese man would not appear riding a horse
Life Magazine, December, 1941
I try to pee but I
can't
Game 83
LI-YOUNG LEE (b. 1957)
Persimmons
Little Father
MARTIN ESPADA (b. 1957)
Bully
Revolutionary Spanish Lesson
Niggerlips
The New Bathroom Policy at English High School
Fidel in Ohio
Federico's Ghost
The Saint Vincent de Paul
Food Pantry Stomp
Imagine The Angels Of Bread
Blues for the Soldiers Who Told You
The Trouble Ball
Hard-Handed Men of Athens
The Right Foot of Juan de Onate
ATSURO RILEY (b. 1960)
From Romey's Order
Picture
Skillet
Bell
Roses
CLAUDIA RANKINE
(b. 1963)
From Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric pp. 7, 23, 47-48, 71, 82-83, 113
D. A. POWELL (b. 1963)
(the cocktail hour finally arrives)
(dogs and boys can treat you like trash)
(came a voice in my gullet)
HEID E. ERDRICH (b. 1963)
True
Myth
The Theft Outright
Some Elsie
NATASHA TRETHEWEY (b. 1966)
Native Ground
Providence
Liturgy
Believer
SHERMAN ALEXIE (b. 1966)
Indian Boy Love Song (#2)
No. 9 (from The Native American Broadcasting System)
Evolution
Scalp Dance by
Spokane Indians
How to Write the Great American Indian Novel
Tourists
RICHARD SIKEN (b. 1967)
Visible World
A Primer for the Small Weird Loves
GRAPHIC INTERPRETATIONS:
CHARLES HENRI FORD
Serenade to Leonor
28
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
We
Real Cool
ALLEN GINSBERG
Kraj Majales
Moloch
Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing
Blake
William Everson
A Canticle to the Waterbirds
DAVID IGNATOW
The Form Falls in On Itself
W. S. MERWIN
When The War is
Over
GARY SNYDER
O Mother Gaia
RICHARD WILBUR
A Difference
Index of Poem Titles
Index of Poets
About the Editor
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author or editor of 28 books, including Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945 (1989),
which helped revolutionize the study of American poetry.
Anthology of Modern American Poetry - Edited by Cary Nelson
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
