# The Best American Poetry 1990

The Best American Poetry 1990, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Jorie Graham. The book contains seventy-five poems with a range of poet-authors from a college freshman to the 1990 United States Poet Laureate. David Lehman publicly commented that poetry in America retains its vitality for both the poet and reader, after the 1989 series book attained bestseller status.
Graham chose, as one of the best American poems published in the 12-month period, a work by her husband at the time, James Galvin.

## Poets and poems included

| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| A. R. Ammons | "The Damned" | The Yale Review |
| John Ash | "The Sweeping Gesture" | Broadway |
| John Ashbery | "Notes from the Air" | The New Yorker |
| Marvin Bell | "Victim of Himself" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Stephen Berg | "First Song/Bankei/1653/" | Denver Quarterly |
| Mei-mei Berssenbrugge | "Jealousy" | Empathy |
| Hayden Carruth | "Crucifixion" | American Poetry Review |
| Anne Carson | "The Life of Towns" | Grand Street |
| Raymond Carver | "Wake Up" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Amy Clampitt | "My Cousin Muriel" | The New Yorker |
| Killarney Clary | "'Boys on street corners in Santa Ana...'" | Who Whispered Near Me |
| Robert Creeley | "Thinking" | Harvard Magazine |
| Christopher Davis | "Dying in Your Garden of Death to Go Back into My Garden" | The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future |
| Thomas M. Disch | "The Crumbling Infrastructure" | Southwest Review |
| Norman Dubie | "Of Politics & Art" | American Poetry Review |
| Aaron Fogel | "The Chessboard Is on Fire" | Boulevard |
| James Galvin | "To the Republic" | New Letters |
| Suzanne Gardinier | "This Land" | Grand Street |
| Amy Gerstler | "The Ice Age" | The Paris Review |
| Linda Gregg | "The War" | New Letters |
| Thom Gunn | "Duncan" | The Threepenny Review |
| Donald Hall | "Praise for Death" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Daniel Halpern | "Bell & Capitol" | Ontario Review |
| Robert Hass | "Berkeley Eclogue" | Human Wishes |
| Seamus Heaney | "Crossings" | The New Yorker |
| Anthony Hecht | "Eclogue of the Shepherd and the Townie" | The Sewanee Review |
| Emily Hiestand | "On Nothing" | The Hudson Review |
| Brenda Hillman | "No Greener Pastures" | Fortress |
| John Hollander | "An Old-Fashioned Song" | The New Republic |
| Virginia Hooper | "Climbing Out of the Cage" | Denver Quarterly |
| Richard Howard | "The Victor Vanquished" | Antaeus |
| Fanny Howe | "Perfection and Derangement" | o•blék |
| Rodney Jones | "On the Bearing of Waitresses" | Transparent Gestures |
| Galway Kinnell | "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Edward Kleinschmidt | "Gangue" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Yusef Komunyakaa | "Facing It" | Dien Cai Dau |
| Denise Levertov | "Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell" | American Poetry Review |
| Philip Levine | "Scouting" | Western Humanities Review |
| Thomas Lux | "Time" | American Poetry Review |
| Nathaniel Mackey | "Slipped Quadrant" | Avec |
| Kevin Magee | "Road" | Hambone |
| Thomas McGrath | "Afternoon of a McGrath" | The Nation |
| Lynne McMahon | "Barbie's Ferrari" | American Poetry Review |
| Jane Mead | "Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make" | The Virginia Quarterly Review |
| James Merrill | "Quatrains for Pegasus" | The Nation |
| W. S. Merwin | "The Morning Train" | The New Yorker |
| Jane Miller | "Adoration" | Black Warrior Review |
| Susan Mitchell | "Havana Birth" | Ploughshares |
| Paul Monette | "The Worrying" | Love Alone |
| Laura Moriarty | "La Malinche" | Temblor |
| Thylias Moss | "There Will Be Animals" | Pyramid of Bone |
| Melinda Mueller | "Teratology" | Fine Madness |
| Laura Mullen | "They" | The Threepenny Review |
| Alice Notley | "(2 pages from a long poem in progress)" | How(ever) |
| Michael Palmer | "Six Hermetic Songs" | Sulfur |
| Robert Pinsky | "Pilgrimage" | Antaeus |
| Jendi Reiter | "Service Includes Free Lifetime Updating" | Hanging Loose |
| Joan Retallack | "Japanese Presentation, I & II" | o•blék |
| Donald Revell | "The Old Causes" | Boulevard |
| Adrienne Rich | "Living Memory" | American Poetry Review |
| Michael Ryan | "Switchblade" | God Hunger |
| James Schuyler | "Haze" | The New Yorker |
| Frederick Seidel | "AIDS Days" | These Days |
| Charles Simic | "The Initiate" | Antaeus |
| Gustaf Sobin | "Transparent Itineraries: 1984" | Voyaging Portraits |
| Elizabeth Spires | "Primos" | American Poetry Review |
| David St. John | "Last Night with Rafaella" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Gerald Stern | "Saving My Skin from Burning" | Iowa Review |
| Mark Strand | "Orpheus Alone" | The New Yorker |
| James Tate | "Distance from Loved Ones" | Denver Quarterly |
| Sidney Wade | "Aurora Borealis and the Body Louse" | Grand Street |
| Rosanna Warren | "The Cormorant" | Boulevard |
| Richard Wilbur | "A Wall in the Woods: Cummington" | The New Yorker |
| Eleanor Wilner | "Reading the Bible Backwards" | Sarah's Choice |
| Charles Wright | "Saturday Morning Journal" | Antaeus |

## Most represented publications in this volume

The following publications were represented more than once in this year's volume:
| American Poetry Review | 7 |
| The New Yorker | 7 |
| Antaeus | 4 |
| Grand Street | 3 |
| Denver Quarterly | 3 |
| The Atlantic Monthly | 2 |
| The Gettysburg Review | 2 |
| o•blék | 2 |
| The Threepenny Review | 2 |