# The Best American Poetry 1992

The Best American Poetry 1992, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Charles Simic.
In the Forward, Lehman writes, "No critic will ever have the effect on our poets than certain of their grade school teachers had — the ones often credited by the poets themselves for their lifelong devotion to the art."
Lehman's forward also mentioned various public comments about the nation's lack of interest in poetry and questions about its future.

## Poets and poems included

| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| Jonathan Aaron | "Dance Mania" | The Paris Review |
| Agha Shahid Ali | "I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror" | Field |
| John Ash | "The Ungrateful Citizens" | The Paris Review |
| John Ashbery | "Poem at the New Year" | The New Yorker |
| Robin Behn | "Midwestern Villanelle" | Iowa Review |
| Charles Bernstein | "How I Painted Certain of My Pictures" | Hambone |
| George Bilgere | "Healing" | Iowa Review |
| Elizabeth Bishop | "Dear, My Compass..." | The New Yorker |
| Robert Bly | "The Crippled Godwit" | Ploughshares |
| Lucie Brock-Broido | "Inevitably, She Declined" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Joseph Brodsky | "Homage to Gerolamo Marcello" | The New Yorker |
| Hayden Carruth | "Sex" | The Sewanee Review |
| Billy Collins | "Nostalgia" | The Georgia Review |
| Robert Creeley | "Other" | Grand Street |
| Kathleen de Azevedo | "Famous Women--Claudette Colbert" | Fine Madness |
| Carl Dennis | "Spring Letter" | Poetry |
| Deborah Digges | "My Amaryllis" | Ploughshares |
| Stephen Dunn | "Smiles" | Iowa Review |
| Susan Firer | "The Bright Waterfall of Angels" | Iowa Review |
| Alice Fulton | "A Little Heart-to-Heart with the Horizon" | Ploughshares |
| Tess Gallagher | "We're All Pharaohs When We Die" | The Paris Review |
| Amy Gerstler | "On Wanting to Grow Horns" | Witness |
| Jack Gilbert | "Voices Inside and Out" | Ploughshares |
| Louise Glück | "Vespers" | The New Yorker |
| Jill Gonet | "Body Will" | ZYZZYVA |
| Jorie Graham | "Manifest Destiny" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Allen Grossman | "Poland of Death (IV)" | Tikkun |
| Marilyn Hacker | "Elysian Fields" | The Paris Review |
| Donald Hall | "Spring Glen Grammar School" | The New Yorker |
| Daniel Halpern | "Infidelities" | The Paris Review |
| Robert Hass | "My Mother's Nipples" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Vickie Hearne | "St. Luke Painting the Virgin" | Raritan |
| Juan Felipe Herrera | "Iowa Blues Bar Spiritual" | New England Review |
| Edward Hirsch | "Man on a Fire Escape" | The New Yorker |
| Daniel Hoffman | "Identities" | Boulevard |
| John Hollander | "Days of Autumn" | Grand Street |
| Richard Howard | "Like Most Revelations" | Boston Phoenix |
| Lynda Hull | "Lost Fugue for Chet" | The Kenyon Review |
| Lawrence Joseph | "Some Sort of Chronicler I Am" | The Kenyon Review |
| Galway Kinnell | "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" | The Ohio Review |
| Carolyn Kizer | "Twelve O'clock" | The Paris Review |
| Phyllis Koestenbaum | "Admission of Failure" | Epoch |
| Sharon Krinsky | "Mystery Stories" | Brooklyn Review |
| Maxine Kumin | "Saga: Four Variations on the Sonnet" | Ploughshares |
| Evelyn Lao | "Green" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Li-Young Lee | "This Hour and What Is Dead" | Ploughshares |
| Dionisio D. Martínez | "Across These Landscapes of Early Darkness" | Iowa Review |
| Mekeel McBride | "All Hallows' Eve" | North American Review |
| James McCorkle | "" . . .The Storm is Passing Over"; She Sang" | Verse |
| Jerry McGuire | "Terminal" | Callaloo |
| Sandra McPherson | "Choosing an Author for Assurance in the Night" | Field |
| Robert Morgan | "Honey" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Thylias Moss | "An Anointing" | Epoch |
| Carol Muske | "Red Trousseau" | American Poetry Review |
| Mary Oliver | "Rain" | Poetry |
| Michael Palmer | "Eighth Sky" | Grand Street |
| Robert Pinsky | "Avenue" | Boston Phoenix |
| Lawrence Raab | "The Sudden Appearance of a Monster at a Window" | Denver Quarterly |
| Liam Rector | "The Night the Lightning Bugs Lit Last in the Field Then Went Their Way" | AGNI |
| Donald Revell | "Plenitude" | New Letters |
| Adrienne Rich | "For a Friend in Travail" | Poetry |
| Len Roberts | "We Sat, So Patient" | Boulevard |
| Lynda Schraufnagel | "Trial" | Western Humanities Review |
| Elizabeth Spires | "Good Friday. Driving Westward." | The New Criterion |
| Rachel Srubas | "I Want to Marry You" | Another Chicago Magazine |
| David St. John | "Lucifer in Starlight" | Denver Quarterly |
| Richard Tillinghast | "Anatolian Journey" | The New Yorker |
| Lewis Turco | "Kamelopard" | The Formalist |
| Chase Twichell | "Word Silence" | The Yale Review |
| Rosanna Warren | "Necrophiliac" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Ioanna-Veronika Warwick | "Eyeglasses" | Exquisite Corpse |
| C. K. Williams | "The Knot" | Antaeus |
| Charles Wright | "Winter-Worship" | Field |
| Franz Wright | "Depiction of Childhood" | Field |
| Stephen Yenser | "Vertumnal" | The Yale Review |

## Publications most frequently represented

In order of frequency, these are the publications most represented this year:
| The New Yorker | 7 |
| Paris Review | 6 |
| Ploughshares | 6 |
| The Iowa Review | 5 |
| Field | 4 |
| Michigan Quarterly Review | 4 |
| The Atlantic Monthly | 2 |
| Boulevard | 2 |
| Denver Quarterly | 2 |
| Grand Street | 2 |
| The Kenyon Review | 2 |
| Poetry | 2 |
| The Yale Review | 2 |