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, poems and/or included:
“Lately our poets loiter’d in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballads of the plains;”
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
“Suppertime I float toward you
from the stewpot
holding poems you shrug off
and you kiss me like a mosquito.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The Heavenly eye,
Much wider than the sky,
Wherein they all included were,
The glorious Soul, that was the King
Made to possess them, did appear
A small and little thing!”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)