# The Best American Poetry 2001

The Best American Poetry 2001, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Robert Hass.

## Background

In his introduction, Hass wrote, "There are roughly three traditions in American poetry at this point: a metrical tradition that can be very nervy and that is also basically classical in impulse; a strong central tradition of free verse made out of both romanticism and modernism, split between the impulses of an inward and psychological writing and an outward and realist one, at its best fusing the two; and an experimental tradition that is usually more passionate about form than content, perception than emotion, restless with the conventions of the art, skeptical about the political underpinnings of current practice, and intent on inventing a new one, or at least undermining what seems repressive in the current formed style. [...] At the moment there are poets doing good, bad, and indifferent work in all these ranges."
Speaking of the selection process for his editorship, Hass observed that he received "boxes...[of] xeroxes and notations of the indefatigable David Lehman....I had marked for rereading a couple of hundred poems [myself] and I had David's sometimes overlapping lists..." .
Maureen McLane, in a book review in The Chicago Tribune, said of Hass' description that "it's hard to imagine a more judicious account of major tendencies."
"While many charming, witty poems have made it into this anthology, there are plenty of others that would seem to evade not only the perils of being charming but indeed the strictures of being a poem, conventionally understood," McLane wrote. She found the selections by Joshua Clover Thomas Sayers Ellis, Cal Bedient, Robert Bly, Michael Burkard and Claudia Rankine confusing (but not necessarily bad poems for that reason), and praised the work by Brenda Hillman, Louise Glück, Alan Feldman, Bernard Welt, Joshua Clover, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Fanny Howe, Michael Palmer, Lydia Davis, Rachel Rose, David Kirby, Jewelle Gomez, Noelle Kocot and Grace Paley.
Hass also included newly published work by the late Elizabeth Bishop and James Schuyler. Schuyler's poem was discovered by David Lehman in May 1994 in John Ashbery's archive at Harvard's Houghton Library and appeared six years later in "The New Yorker". One of the poems Hass chose for the volume was by his wife, Brenda Hillman.

## Poets and poems included

| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| Nin Andrews | "Notes for a Sermon on the Mount" | Another Chicago Magazine |
| Rae Armantrout | "The Plan" | American Poetry Review |
| John Ashbery | "Crossroads in the Past" | The New York Review of Books |
| Angela Ball | "Jazz" | The Nebraska Review |
| Mary Jo Bang | "Crossed-Over, Fiend-Snitched, X-ed Out" | New American Writing |
| Cal Bedient | "When the Gods Put on Meter" | Colorado Review |
| Elizabeth Bishop | "Vague Poem" | The New Yorker |
| Robert Bly | "The French Generals" | The Paris Review |
| Lee Ann Brown | "Sonnet Around Stephanie" | Verse |
| Michael Burkard | "Notes About My Face" | American Poetry Review |
| Trent Busch | "Heartland" | The Nation |
| Amina Calil | "Blouse of Felt" | Faucheuse |
| Anne Carson | "Longing, a documentary" | The Threepenny Review |
| Joshua Clover | "Ceriserie" | American Poetry Review |
| Billy Collins | "Snow Day" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Robert Creeley | "En Famille" | Boston Book Review |
| Lydia Davis | "A Mown Lawn" | McSweeney's |
| R. Erica Doyle | "Ma Ramon" | Callaloo |
| Christopher Edgar | "The Cloud of Unknowing" | Boston Review |
| Thomas Sayers Ellis | "T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M." | AGNI |
| Amy England | "The Art of the Snake Story" | Quarter After Eight |
| Alan Feldman | "Contemporary American Poetry" | Poetry |
| James Galvin | "Little Dantesque" | Fence |
| Louise Glück | "Time" | The New Yorker |
| Jewelle Gomez | "My Chakabuku Mama: a comic tale" | Callaloo |
| Jorie Graham | "Gulls" | Conjunctions |
| Linda Gregerson | "Waterborne" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Linda Gregg | "The Singers Change, The Music Goes On" | AGNI |
| Allen Grossman | "Enough rain for Agnes Walquist" | The Southern Review |
| Donald Hall | "Her Garden" | The Times Literary Supplement |
| Anthony Hecht | "Sarabande on Attaining the Age of Seventy-Seven" | The New Yorker |
| Lyn Hejinian | "Nights" | Conjunctions |
| Brenda Hillman | "The Formation of Soils" | The Journal |
| Jane Hirshfield | "In Praise of Coldness" | Tin House |
| John Hollander | "What the Lovers in the Old Songs Thought" | The New Republic |
| Richard Howard | "After 65" | The Antioch Review |
| Fanny Howe | "Doubt" | Seneca Review |
| Olena Kalytiak Davis | "Sweet Reader, Flanneled and Tulled" | The Paris Review |
| Shirley Kaufman | "The Emperor of China" | American Poetry Review |
| Galway Kinnell | "The Quick and the Dead" | The New Yorker |
| David Kirby | "Dear Derrida" | The Kenyon Review |
| Carolyn Kizer | "The Ashes" | The Texas Review |
| Kenneth Koch | "To World War Two" | Harper's |
| Noelle Kocot | "Consolations Before an Affair, Upper West Side" | Another Chicago Magazine |
| John Koethe | "Songs of the Valley" | Southwest Review |
| Yusef Komunyakaa | "Seven Deadly Sins" | Poetry |
| Mark Levine | "Wedding Day" | Northwest Review |
| Sarah Manguso | "The Rider" | American Letters & Commentary |
| J. D. McClatchy | "Tattoos" | The Paris Review |
| Colleen J. McElroy | "Mae West Chats It Up with Bessie Smith" | Crab Orchard Review |
| Heather McHugh | "My One" | jubilat |
| Harryette Mullen | "Music for Homemade Instruments" | Facture |
| Carol Muske Dukes | "Our Kitty" | Evansville Review |
| Alice Notley | "Where Leftover Misery Goes" | Chain |
| Sharon Olds | "His Costume" | The New Yorker |
| Kathleen Ossip | "The Nature of Things" | Barrow Street |
| Grace Paley | "Here" | The Massachusetts Review |
| Michael Palmer | "Untitled (February 2000)" | Conjunctions |
| John Peck | "A Metal Denser Than, and Liquid" | AGNI |
| Lucia Perillo | "The Ghost Shirt" | Pequod |
| Carl Phillips | "The Clearing" | Callaloo |
| Robert Pinsky | "Jersey Rain" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Claudia Rankine | "A short narrative of breasts and womb in service of Plot entitled" | Verse |
| Adrienne Rich | "Architect" | The Paris Review |
| James Richardson | "Vectors: Forty-five Aphorisms and Ten-second Essays" | Ploughshares |
| Rachel Rose | "What We Heard About the Japanese" and "What the Japanese Perhaps Heard"" | Verse |
| Mary Ruefle | "Furtherness" | American Letters & Commentary |
| James Schuyler | "Along Overgrown Paths" | The New Yorker |
| Charles Simic | "Night Picnic" | Boston Review |
| Susan Stewart | "Apple" | TriQuarterly |
| Larissa Szporluk | "Meteor" | The Journal |
| James Tate | "The Diagnosis" | LIT |
| Bernard Welt | "I stopped writing poetry..." | The Antioch Review |
| Dean Young | "Sources of the Delaware" | Volt |
| Rachel Zucker | "In Your Version of Heaven I Am Younger" | American Poetry Review |