The Best American Poetry 2003

Contents

Foreword by David Lehman

Introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa

Jonathan Aaron, "The End of Out of the Past "

Beth Anderson, from "A Locked Room"

Nin Andrews, "Dedicated to the One I Love"

Wendell Berry, "Some Further Words"

Frank Bidart, "Curse"

Diann Blakely, "Rambling on My Mind"

Bruce Bond, "Art Tatum"

Catherine Bowman, from "1000 Lines"

Rosemary Catacalos, "Perfect Attendance: Short Subjects Made from the Staring Photos of Strangers"

Joshua Clover, "Aeon Flux: June"

Billy Collins, "Litany"

Michael S. Collins, "Six Sketches: When a Soul Breaks"

Carl Dennis, "World History"

Susan Dickman, "Skin"

Rita Dove, "Fox Trot Fridays"

Stephen Dunn, "Open Door Blues"

Stuart Dybek, "Journal"

Charles Fort, "The Vagrant Hours"

James Galvin, "Ponderosa"

Amy Gerstler, "An Offer Received in This Morning's Mail:"

Louise Glück, "Landscape"

Michael Goldman, "Report on Human Beings"

Ray Gonzalez, "Max Jacob's Shoes"

Linda Gregg, "Beauty"

Mark Halliday, "The Opaque"

Michael S. Harper, "Rhythmic Arrangements (on prosody)"

Matthea Harvey, "Sad Little Breathing Machine"

George Higgins, "Villanelle"

Edward Hirsch, "The Desire Manuscripts"

Tony Hoagland, "Summer Night"

Richard Howard, "Success"

Rodney Jones, "Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical"

Joy Katz, "Some Rain"

Brigit Pegeen Kelly, "The Dragon"

Galway Kinnell, "When the Towers Fell"

Carolyn Kizer, "After Horace"

Jennifer L. Knox, "Love Blooms at Chimsbury After the War"

Kenneth Koch, "Proverb"

John Koethe, "Y2K (1933)"

Ted Kooser, "In the Hall of Bones"

Philip Levine, "The Music of Time"

J. D. McClatchy, "Jihad"

W. S. Merwin, "To Zbigniew Herbert's Bicycle"

Heather Moss, "Dear Alter Ego"

Stanley Moss, "A History of Color"

Paul Muldoon, "The Loaf"

Peggy Munson, "Four Deaths That Happened Daily"

Marilyn Nelson, "Asparagus"

Daniel Nester, "Poem for the Novelist Whom I Forced to Write a Poem"

Naomi Shihab Nye, "What Happened to Everybody"

Ishle Yi Park, "Queen Min Bi"

Robert Pinsky, "Anniversary"

Kevin Prufer, "What the Paymaster Said"

Ed Roberson, "Sequoia sempervirens"

Vijay Seshadri, "The Disappearances"

Alan Shapiro, "Sleet"

Myra Shapiro, "For Nazim Hikmet in the Old Prison, Now a Four Seasons Hotel"

Bruce Smith, "Song with a Child's Pacifier in It"

Charlie Smith, "There's Trouble Everywhere"

Maura Stanton, "Translating"

Ruth Stone, "Lines"

James Tate, "The Restaurant Business"

William Tremblay, "The Lost Boy"

Natasha Trethewey, "After Your Death"

David Wagoner, "On Being Asked to Discuss Poetic Theory"

Ronald Wallace, "In a Rut"

Lewis Warsh, "Premonition"

Susan Wheeler, "In Sky"

Richard Wilbur, "Man Running"

C. K. Williams, "The World"

Terence Winch, "My Work"

David Wojahn, "Scrabble with Matthews"

Robert Wrigley, "Clemency"

Anna Ziegler, "After the Opening, 1932"

Ahmos Zu-Bolton II, "Reading the Bones: a Blackjack Moses nightmare"

Contributors' Notes and Comments

Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published

Acknowledgments