Poets and Poems Included
| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| Latif Asad Abdullah | "The Tombs" | Extracts from Pelican Bay |
| Sherman Alexie | "Capital Punishment" | Indiana Review |
| Margaret Atwood | "Morning in the Burned House" | North American Review |
| Thomas Avena | "Cancer Garden" | The Occident |
| Marie Annharte Baker | "Porkskin Panorama" | Callaloo |
| Sidney Burris | "Strong's Winter" | The Southern Review |
| Rosemary Catacalos | "David Talamantez on the Last Day of Second Grade" |
The Texas Observer |
| Marilyn Chin | "Cauldron" | The Kenyon Review |
| Wanda Coleman | "American Sonnet (35)" | River City |
| Jacqueline Dash | "Me Again" | In Time |
| Ingrid de Kok | "Transfer" | TriQuarterly |
| William Dickey | "The Arrival of the Titanic" | Poetry |
| Nancy Eimers | "A Night Without Stars" | Alaska Review Quarterly |
| Nancy Eimers | "A History of Navigation" | Poetry Northwest |
| Martin Espada | "Rednecks" | Ploughshares |
| Martin Espada | "Sleeping on the Bus" | The Progressive |
| Beth Ann Fennelly | "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding" |
Farmer's Market |
| Robert C. Fuentes | "In This Place" | Extracts from Pelican Bay |
| Rámon Garcia, Salmo | "Para El" | The Americas Review |
| Suzanne Gardinier | "Two Girls" | The American Voice |
| Frank Gaspar | "Kapital" | The Kenyon Review |
| Reginald Gibbons | "White Beach" | The Southern Review |
| C. S. Giscombe | "All (Facts, Stories, Chance)" | River Styx |
| Kimiko Hahn | "Possession: A Zuihitsu" | Another Chicago Magazine |
| Gail Hanlon | "Plainsong" | Poetry Flash |
| Henry Hart | "The Prisoner of Camau" | Beloit Poetry Journal |
| William Heyen | "The Steadying" | Triquarterly |
| Jonathan Johnson | "Renewal" | Cream City Review |
| Jane Kenyon | "Reading Aloud to My Father" | Poetry |
| August Kleinzahler | "Two Canadian Landscapes" | Private |
| Yusef Komunyakaa | "Nude Study" | The Kenyon Review |
| Stanley Kunitz | "Touch Me" | The New Yorker |
| Natasha Le Bel | "Foot Fire Burn Dance" | Hanging Loose |
| Natasha Le Bel | "Boxing the Female" | Hanging Loose |
| Carolyn Lei-Lanilau | "Kolohe or Communication" | Manoa |
| Valerie Martínez | "It Is Not" | Prairie Schooner |
| Davis McCombs | "The River and Under the River" | No Roses Review |
| Sandra McPherson | "Edge Effect" | Poetry |
| James Merrill | "b o d y" | The New York Times |
| W. S. Merwin | "Lament for the Makers" | Poetry |
| Jane Miller | "Far Away" | Colorado Review |
| Susan Mitchell | "Girl Tearing Up Her Face" | The Paris Review |
| Pat Mora | "Mangos y limones" | Prairie Schooner |
| Alice Notley | "One of the Longest Times" | Fourteen Hills |
| Naomi Shihab Nye | "The Small Vases from Hebron" | Many Mountains Moving |
| Alicia Ostriker | "The Eighth and Thirteenth" | Poetry Flash |
| Raymond Patterson | "Harlem Suite" | Drumvoices Revue |
| Carl Phillips | "As From a Quiver of Arrows" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Wing Ping | "Song of Calling Souls" | Sulfur |
| Sterling Plumpp | "Poet and When the Spirit Spray-Paints the Sky" |
TriQuarterly |
| Katherine Alice Power | "Sestina for Jaime" | In Time |
| Reynolds Price | "Twenty-One Years" | The Southern Review |
| Alberto Alvaro Ríos | "Domingo Limón" | Prairie Schooner |
| Pattiann Rogers | "Abundance and Satisfaction" | Iowa Review |
| Quentin Rowan | "Prometheus at Coney Island" | Hanging Loose |
| David Shapiro | "For the Evening Land" | Lingo |
| Angela Shaw | "Crepuscule" | Poetry |
| Reginald Shepherd | "Skin Trade" | Ploughshares |
| Enid Shomer | "Passive Resistance" | Poetry |
| Gary Soto | "Fair Trade" | Prairie Schooner |
| Jean Starr | "Flight" | Callaloo |
| Deborah Stein | "heat" | Hanging Loose |
| Roberta Tejada | "Honeycomb perfection of this form before me..."" |
Sulfur |
| Chase Twichell | "Aisle of Dogs" | Iowa Review |
| Luís Alberto Urrea | "Ghost Sickness" | Many Mountains Moving |
| Jean Valentine | "Tell Me, What Is the Soul" | The New Yorker |
| Alma Luz Villanueva | "Crazy Courage" | Prairie Schooner |
| Karen Volkman | "The Case" | The Paris Review |
| Diane Wakoski | "The Butcher's Apron" | Many Mountains Moving |
| Ron Welburn | "Yellow Wolf Spirit" | Callaloo |
| Susan Wheeler | "Run on a Warehouse" | The Paris Review |
| Paul Wilis | "Meeting Like This" | Weber Studies |
| Anne Winters | "The Mill-Race" | TriQuarterly |
| C. Dale Young | "Vespers" | The Southern Review |
| Ray A. Young Bear | "Our Bird Aegis" | Callaloo |
Read more about this topic: The Best American Poetry 1996
Famous quotes containing the words poets, poems and/or included:
“Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which he lives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“People accept a representation in which the elements of wish and fantasy are purposely included but which nevertheless proclaims to represent “the past” and to serve as a guide-rule for life, thereby hopelessly confusing the spheres of knowledge and will.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)