Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry

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.

• Topical Table of Contents ; Preface ; Acknowledgements ; MARY CORNELIA HARTSHORNE (c. 1910-) ; --Fallen Leaves ; --Hills of Doon ; --Wind in Mexico ; CHARLES HENRI FORD (1910-2002) ; --Plaint ; --Flag of Ecstasy ; --Pastoral for 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 ; --from Elegies for Paradise Valley ; --No. 1 ; --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 ; ---"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 ; -- 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 ; --Presences ; --Absences ; 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 ; 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 ; --Beginning ; --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 Garcia 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 ; -- from The Colors of Night ; ---Purple ; --The Burning ; --December 29, 1890 ; --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 Cezanne ; 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) ; --From Articulation of Sound Forms in Time: ; --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) ; -- 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, 1876 ; --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 GLUCK (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 ; --Autobiography ; PAUL VIOLI (1944-2011) ; --Index ; --Tanka ; --A Moveable Snack ; THOMAS JAMES (1946-1974) ; --Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh XXI Dynasty ; --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 ; --Communique ; --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 FORCHE (b. 1950) ; --The Colonel ; --The Museum of Stones ; --The Lightkeeper ; --Morning on the Island ; 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 Tio Baca El Poeta De Socorro ; --The Painters ; ALBERTO RIOS (b. 1952) ; --Madre Sofia ; --What Happened to Me ; ANITA ENDREZZE (b. 1952) ; --Return of the Wolves ; --Birdwatching at Fan Lake ; --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) ; --Refugee 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) ; --(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 caffeinated 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: whether ending a day at the office] ; --[dogs and boys can treat you like trash. And dogs do love trash] ; --[came a voice in my gullet: rise up and feast. thunderous] ; HEID E. ERDRICH (b. 1963) ; --True Myth ; --The Theft Outright ; --Some Elsie ; NATASHA TRETHEWAY (b. 1966) ; --Native Ground ; --Providence ; --Believer ; --Liturgy ; SHERMAN ALEXIE (b. 1966) ; --Indian Boy Love Song (#2) ; --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

The Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry is an impressive collection, ranging in style - from traditional to experimental-and in content-from private to public concerns. It provides poetic sustenance for a variety of student hungers.