Poets and Poems Included
| Poet | Poem | Edition year in which poem previously appeared |
| Jonathan Aaron | "Dance Mania" | 1992 |
| A. R. Ammons | "Anxiety's Prosody " | 1989 |
| A. R. Ammons | "Garbage" | 1993 |
| A. R. Ammons | from "Strip"" | 1997 |
| John Ashbery | "Baked Alaska" | 1993 |
| John Ashbery | "Myrtle" | 1994 |
| John Ashbery | "The Problem of Anxiety" | 1997 |
| Elizabeth Bishop | "It is Marvellous . . ." | 1989 |
| George Bradley | "The Fire Fetched Down" | 1994 |
| Lucie Brock-Broido | "Inevitably, She Declined" | 1992 |
| Anne Carson | "The Life of Towns" | 1990 |
| Amy Clampitt | "My Cousin Muriel" | 1990 |
| Douglas Crase | "True Solar Holiday" | 1989 |
| Carolyn Creedon | "litany" | 1993 |
| Thomas M. Disch | "The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act" | 1994 |
| Irving Feldman | "Terminal Laughs" | 1995 |
| Aaron Fogel | "The Printers Error" | 1995 |
| Alice Fulton | "Powers of Congress" | 1989 |
| Allen Ginsberg | "Salutations to Fernando Pessoa" | 1995 |
| Louise Glück | "Celestial Music" | 1991 |
| Louise Glück | "Vespers" | 1992 |
| Jorie Graham | "Manifest Destiny" | 1992 |
| Jorie Graham | "What the Instant Contains" | 1993 |
| Allen Grossman | "The Piano Player Explains Himself" | 1988 |
| Donald Hall | "Prophecy" | 1988 |
| Donald Hall | "The Porcelain Couple" | 1997 |
| Vicki Hearne | "St. Luke Painting the Virgin" | 1992 |
| Anthony Hecht | "Prospects" | 1995 |
| Edward Hirsch | "Man on a Fire Escape" | 1992 |
| John Hollander | "Kinneret" | 1989 |
| John Hollander | "An Old-Fashioned Song" | 1990 |
| John Hollander | "The See-Saw" | 1991 |
| Richard Howard | "Like Most Revelations" | 1992 |
| Donald Justice | "Nostalgia of the Lakefronts" | 1988 |
| Donald Justice | "Invitation to a Ghost" | 1993 |
| Brigit Pegeen Kelly | "The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery" | 1993 |
| Jane Kenyon | "Three Songs at the End of the Summer" | 1989 |
| Galway Kinnell | "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone" | 1990 |
| Karl Kirchwey | "Sonogram" | 1995 |
| Kenneth Koch | "One Train May Hide Another" | 1994 |
| Yusef Komunyakaa | "Facing It" | 1990 |
| Ann Lauterbach | "Psyches Dream" | 1988 |
| Philip Levine | "Scouting" | 1990 |
| Harry Matthews | "Histoire" | 1988 |
| J. D. McClatchy | "An Essay on Friendship" | 1991 |
| James Merrill | "Family Week at Oracle Ranch" | 1994 |
| James Merrill | "The 'Ring' Cycle" | 1991 |
| James Merrill | "A Room at the Heart of Things" | 1989 |
| W.S. Merwin | "The Stranger" | 1993 |
| Susan Mitchell | "Havana Birth" | 1990 |
| A. F. Moritz | "Protracted Episode" | 1991 |
| Thylias Moss | "The Warmth of Hot Chocolate" | 1989 |
| Brighde Mullins | "At the Lakehouse" | 1994 |
| Molly Peacock | "Have You Ever Faked an Orgasm?" | 1995 |
| Bob Perelman | "Movie" | 1989 |
| Carl Phillips | "A Mathematics of Breathing" | 1994 |
| Kay Ryan | "Outsider Art" | 1995 |
| Grace Schulman | "The Present Perfect" | 1995 |
| David Shapiro | "The Seasons" | 1991 |
| Charles Simic | "Country Fair" | 1991 |
| Charles Simic | "The Something" | 1997 |
| Gary Snyder | "Ripples on the Surface" | 1993 |
| Mark Strand | "Reading in Place" | 1989 |
| Mark Strand | from "Dark Harbor" | 1993 |
| Mark Strand | "Morning, Noon, and Night" | 1997 |
| May Swenson | "Sleeping with Boa" | 1994 |
| Derek Walcott | "Omeros" | 1991 |
| Rosanna Warren | "The Cormorant" | 1990 |
| Rosanna Warren | "Diversion" | 1997 |
| Susan Wheeler | "What Memory Reveals" | 1988 |
| Richard Wilbur | "Lying" | 1997 |
| Richard Wilbur | "A Wall in the Woods: Cummington" | 1990 |
| Charles Wright | "Disjecta Membra" | 1997 |
| Jay Wright | "Madrid" | 1989 |
| Jay Wright | "The Cradle Logic of Autumn" | 1995 |
Read more about this topic: The Best Of The Best American Poetry 1988-1997
Famous quotes containing the words poets and, poets, poems and/or included:
“Poets and writers who are in love with the superlative all want to do more than they can.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8 B.C.)
“Under the one word “house” are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)