A mid an "explosion in the interest of poetry nationwide"(The New York Times), The Best American Poetry 2000delivers one of the finest volumes yet in this renowned series. Guest editor Rita Dove, a distinguished figure in the poetry world and the second African-American poet ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, brings all of her dynamism and well-honed acumen to bear on this project. Dove used a simple yet exacting method to make her selections: "The final criterion," she writes in her introduction, "was Emily Dickinson's famed description -- if I felt that the top of my head had been taken off, the poem was in." The result is a marvelous collection of consistently high-quality poems diverse in form, tone, style, stance, and subject matter. With comments from the poets themselves illuminating their poems and a foreword by series editor David Lehman,The Best American Poetry 2000is this year's must-have book for all poetry lovers.

David Lehman, the series editor of The Best American Poetry, edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His eleven books of poetry include The Morning Line, Playlist, Poems in the Manner Of, New and Selected Poems, When a Woman Loves a Man, and The Daily Mirror. The most recent of his many nonfiction books is The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, New York.

Foreword

9

(8)

David Lehman

Introduction

17

(10)

Rita Dove

``Virgin Spring''

27

(2)

Kim Addonizio

``Semiotics''

29

(1)

Pamela Alexander

``Shot Glass''

30

(2)

A. R. Ammons

``Mary Todd on Her Deathbed''

32

(2)

Julianna Baggott

``Choose Your Garden''

34

(2)

Erin Belieu

``Mango, Number 61''

36

(2)

Richard Blanco

``The Year''

38

(1)

Janet Bowdan

``Crow Is Walking''

39

(2)

Grace Butcher

``Signs''

41

(1)

Lucille Clifton

``Man Listening to Disc''

42

(2)

Billy Collins

``Between Periods''

44

(3)

Jim Daniels

``The Most Beautiful Word''

47

(1)

Linh Dinh

``Immigrant Picnic''

48

(2)

Gregory Djanikian

``Incest Taboo''

50

(5)

Denise Duhamel

``Birthday''

55

(2)

Christopher Edgar

``Alpha Images''

57

(5)

Karl Elder

``Walt, I Salute You!''

62

(2)

Lynn Emanuel

``Mrs. Hill''

64

(2)

B. H. Fairchild

``We Did Not Fear the Father''

66

(1)

Charles Fort

``Seven Roses''

67

(2)

Frank X. Gaspar

``And in the Afternoons I Botanized''

69

(4)

Elton Glaser

``For the Other World''

73

(2)

Ray Gonzalez

``The Last Living Castrato''

75

(2)

Jennifer Grotz

``The Dump''

77

(2)

Thom Gunn

``Before''

79

(2)

Mark Halliday

``Ode to the Lost Luggage Warehouse at the Rome Airport''

81

(4)

Barbara Hamby

``Goldsboro Narratives''

85

(3)

Forrest Hamer

``Air for Mercury''

88

(3)

Brenda Hillman

``Considering the Demise of Everything''

91

(2)

Marsha Janson

``Epistle''

93

(2)

Mark Jarman

``Ghosts''

95

(1)

Patricia Spears Jones

``Plea for Forgiveness''

96

(2)

Rodney Jones

``Ralph: A Love Story''

98

(3)

Donald Justice

``Six Apologies, Lord''

101

(1)

Olena Kalytiak Davis

``At the Grave of Harold Goldstein''

102

(5)

David Kirby

``The Oration''

107

(2)

Carolyn Kizer

``The Muse of the Actual''

109

(2)

Lynne Knight

``The Goddess of Quotas Laments''

111

(1)

Yusef Komunyakaa

``Henry Clay's Mouth''

112

(2)

Thomas Lux

``We Take Our Children to Ireland''

114

(2)

Lynne McMahon

``The Hours of Darkness''

116

(3)

W. S. Merwin

``Lost Parrot''

119

(2)

Susan Mitchell

``Aunt Lily and Frederick the Great''

121

(2)

Jean Nordhaus

``Work''

123

(6)

Mary Oliver

``I Do Not''

129

(3)

Michael Palmer

``Paris''

132

(2)

Paul Perry

```All art...'''

134

(2)

Carl Phillips

``Samurai Song''

136

(1)

Robert Pinsky

``History & Bikinis''

137

(5)

Donald Platt

``Kunitz Tending Roses''

142

(2)

Stanley Plumly

``Permanence''

144

(2)

Lawrence Raab

``The Beach at Falmouth Heights, Summer, 1952''

146

(5)

Thomas Rabbitt

``Au Pair''

151

(2)

Mary Jo Salter

``Welcome to Ithaca''

153

(2)

Rebecca Seiferle

``Postfeminism''

155

(2)

Brenda Shaughnessy

``from Black Series''

157

(2)

Laurie Sheck

``Semantics at Four P.M.''

159

(2)

Reginald Shepherd

``The Dislocated Room''

161

(4)

Richard Siken

``Mother of Us All''

165

(2)

Cathy Song

``Chit-Chat with the Junior League Women''

167

(2)

Gary Soto

``In a Field Outside the Town''

169

(4)

Gabriel Spera

``Asphodel''

173

(1)

A. E. Stallings

``Wings''

174

(2)

Susan Stewart

``The English Canon''

176

(1)

Adrienne Su

``There Is a Lake of Ice on the Moon''

177

(2)

Pamela Sutton

``No Palms''

179

(1)

Dorothea Tanning

``Limen''

180

(1)

Natasha Trethewey

``Song''

181

(1)

Quincy Troupe

``Rahim Multani''

182

(3)

Reetika Vazirani

``As I Was Telling David and Alexandra Kelley''

185

(3)

Paul Violi

``Pissarro at Dusk''

188

(5)

Derek Walcott

``Fabrications''

193

(2)

Richard Wilbur

``Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair''

195

(5)

Susan Wood

``Borrowed Love Poems''

200

(5)

John Yau

``The Infirmament''

205

(2)

Dean Young

Contributors' Notes and Comments

207

(50)

Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published

257

(4)

Acknowledgments

261

(6)

The Best American Poetry of the Twentieth Century

267

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Barbara Hamby:

Ode to the Lost Luggage Warehouse at the Rome Airport

Until you've visited the lost luggage warehouse

at the Rome airport in August, you have not lived,

the Mediterranean sun insinuating itself

into the inner sucking marrow of your bones,

roasting your epidermis like a holiday bird.

A goose, upon reflection, would be the fitting

analogy. You hear the faint sizzling of the fat

under your skin, organs grilling, brain singed

as you walk to the guardhouse and show the uniformed

sentinel your paper that certifies you have indeed

lost your bag. You gaze at his amazing hat with plumes

tinted maroon and gold while he scrutinizes your clutch

of ragged forms, signed by Signor Nardo Ferrari,

minor functionary with the state airline

at theufficioin Florence, who has confided

in beautiful English he will retire at the end

of the month and devote himself to the cultivation

of vegetables and fruit, a noble endeavor,

but you suspect he'll not be leaving his lushparadiso

to iron out your petty problems, for you have come

in pursuit of your bag, supplicant on a holy quest to retrieve

that which is your own, or was once your own,

the dresses, coat, boots, and intimate et cetera,

nothing priceless, no treasures as such, but dear to you,

especially the black coat you bought in Paris

in a decrepit building below Sacré-Coeur,

going with Mimi after lunch, giving the secret password,

hearing the answering hiss, walking up four flights

of stairs to a room filled with ugly clothes,

one divine coat, now lost in the dark regions

of this Italian underworld, you hope, for if not here,

it's apparently nowhere, and this warehouse is a warren

of high-ceilinged rooms with thousands of bags stacked

on metal shelves, precariously piled backpacks

with scurf from Katmandu, Malmö, Khartoum, Köln, Kraków,

Istanbul, Reims in France or Francia initaliano,

chic makeup cases, black bags like the suitcases of doom,

hard-shelled portmanteaus like turtles (soft parts

incognito, mating in tandem), briefcases, carpet bags,

19th-century trunks with straps and buckles,

and you see a woman,molto dolorosa,in latex gloves,

a surgeon delving, methodically, in a suitcase

filled with Japanese snacks -- arare, dried squid, rice candy

wrapped in thin edible paper, red and green jellied

sweets -- recognized from your childhood in Hawai'i, and amid

theconglomerazioneof heat, memory, and rage you imagine

a Japanese man, thinking, I'm going to Italy, but the food,

I'll hate it, then packing his favorites: the sublime

shredded mango of blessed memory, cracked plum, dried peas,

and you think of Sei Sho-nagon, supercilious court lady

in 10th-century Japan because you are reading her Pillow Book,

a record of things that disgust or please her

and you whip your kimono around and say,

"Things I adore about Rome: the lingerie stores

for nuns with their fifties bulletproof brassieres

and other medieval undies; the floor of St. Peter's

with its imperialistic measurements of the lesser cathedrals

of the world, St. Paul's in London, the Milan cathedral;

Caravaggio'sBacchusandMadonna of Loreto.

Things that disgust me in August: backpacks with cheese,

child carriers imbedded with the scum of mashed

bananas and cereal, petroleum-laced breezes

from jet exhaust, the color navy blue." Your Italian

is meager but the denizens of this particular realm

of hell are courteous if lethargic and show you

that the bags are stacked by month:

agosto, luglio, giugno,but that's as far

as they go. No Joe DiMaggio or before. To be

anywhere else is all you want. You hate your clothes,

no coat's worth the flames licking your feet, but

you take a careful waltz through the months,

and find nothing in the midst of so much.

The whole long way back to Florence, while the gorgeous

panorama of the countryside flies by,

you have acaffè,try to read, but a few seats down

a child screams, hysterical with fatigue,

and you see his face with its sticky impasto of snot,

candy and tears, and you think of all your losses,

those past and the ones to come, your own death,

il tuo morto,which makes the loss of a French coat,

shoes, and a few dresses seem ridiculous.

You think of your arrival in Florence, the walk home

from the station past the Duomo, your husband's hands,

his kisses and the dinner you'll eat, prosciutto

and melone, perhaps, some ravioli in a restaurant

near the Sant'Ambrogio market, you'll buy a new coat

for winter, an Italian coat,il soprabito,

one more beautiful than the one lost. That's the way

your life will go, one day after another,

until you begin your kamikaze run toward death.

It makes you sick to think of it until you begin

to get used to the idea. I'd better get busy,

you think, enjoy life, be good to others,

drink more wine, fill a suitcase with arare,

dried squid because when you leave home anything can happen.

You may be caught in a foreign country one day,

without money, clothes or anything good to eat,

and you'll have to try that stinky ravioli,

brine-soaked pig knuckles, poached brains quivering

on a wooden platter, tripe, baked ear wax,

fried grasshoppers, ant cakes, dirt soufflés,

and though it seems impossible, they could prove

delicious or at the very least nourishing,

so don't make a fool of yourself, and one day

you may join Signor Ferrari in his bosky Eden.

Everyone will be there God, Jesus and Mary,

your mother and father, even your pain-in-the-ass sister

who got everything. Heaven, you hate it:

the conversation's boring, and everyone's so sane,

so well-adjusted. And it's cold. Heaven should be warm,

a bit like Tahiti, so you're furious, and then you see

your sister, and she's not cold because she's wearing

your French coat, but you're not in heaven, you're on a train,

going faster, it seems, as you approach Florence.

You're in a muddle, glum, have nothing to show

for your day but a headache and a blister

on your heel. You want the train to crash,

blow you to kingdom come. You want your mother

to kiss you, call you Baby, Darling; you'd sell

your soul for some shredded mango or dried plum.

fromFive Points

Excerpted from The Best American Poetry 2000 by Rita Dove
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.