# The Best American Poetry 2005

The Best American Poetry 2005, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Paul Muldoon.
The volume is "one of the series' best books in years", according to Maureen N. McLane, reviewing the book in The Chicago Tribune. "None of these poets is hermetic, but many are willing to challenge you as well as to entertain you. Poetry appears here as an art for grownups — not self-serious adults, but actually mature people who treasure serious play and complex comedy as much as filigreed melancholy." The selections clearly have not been chosen simply because the writer is well-known or in order to represent a certain style or group, she wrote. McLane mentioned particularly good selections by Cecilia Woloch, Catherine Bowman, Elaine Equi, Beth Ann Fennelly, Matthea Harvey, Donald Justice, Marilyn Hacker, and A. R. Ammons, as well as Stacey Harwood, whose poem parodies the extensive contributors notes section in the back of the book. Harwood is the wife of the series editor, David Lehman.

## Poets and poems included

| Poet | Poem | Publication(s) where poem previously appeared |
| A.R. Ammons | "In View of the Fact" | Epoch |
| John Ashbery | "In Dearest, Deepest Winter" | Crazyhorse |
| Maureen Bloomfield | "The Catholic Encyclopedia" | The Cincinnati Review |
| Catherine Bowman | "I Want to Be Your Shoebox" | Open City |
| Stephanie Brown | "Roommates: Noblesse Oblige, Sprezzatura, and Gin Lane" | POOL |
| Charles Bukowski | "The Beats" | New York Quarterly |
| Elena Karina Byrne | "Irregular Masks" | The Los Angeles Review |
| Victoria Chang | "Seven Changs" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Shanna Compton | "To Jaques Pepin" | Gastronomica |
| James Cummins | "The Poets March on Washington" | Jacket |
| Jamey Dunham | "Urban Myth" | Sentence |
| Stephen Dunn | "Five Roses in the Morning" | Iowa Review |
| Karl Elder | "Everything I Needed to Know" | Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Daily |
| Lynn Emanuel | "The Revolution" | Slate |
| Elaine Equi | "Pre-Raphaelite Pinups" | The New Yorker |
| Clayton Eshleman | "The Magical Sadness of Omar Caceres" | FENCE |
| Andrew Feld | "19--: An Elegy" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Beth Ann Fennelly | "I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese." | Ploughshares |
| Edward Field | "In Praise of My Prostate" | Hanging Loose |
| Richard Garcia | "Adam and Eve's Dog" | Notre Dame Review |
| Amy Gerstler | "Watch" | Sycamore Review |
| Leonard Gontarek | "Blue on Her Hands" | American Poetry Review |
| Jessica Goodheart | "Advice for a Stegosaurus" | The Antioch Review |
| George Green | "The Searchers" | Court Green |
| Arielle Greenberg | "The Turn of the Screw" | American Letters & Commentary |
| Marilyn Hacker | "For Kateb Yacine (Algerian playwright, novelist, poet, and activist, 1929-89)" | New England Review, PN Review |
| Matthea Harvey | "I May After Leaving You Walk Quickly or Even Run" | 88 |
| Stacey Harwood | "Contributors' Notes" | LIT |
| Terrance Hayes | "Variations on Two Black Cinema Treasures" | CROWD |
| Samuel Hazo | "Seesaws" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Anthony Hecht | "Motes A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye." | The New Yorker |
| Jennifer Michael Hecht | "The Propagation of the Species" | In Posse Review |
| Lyn Hejinian | "from The Fatalist" | Bomb |
| Ruth Herschberger | "Remorse After a Panic Attack in a Wisconsin Field, 1975" | New Letters |
| Jane Hirshfield | "Burlap Sack" | Runes |
| Tony Hoagland | "In a Quiet Town by the Sea" | The Cincinnati Review |
| Vicki Hudspith | "Ants" | Mudfish |
| Donald Justice | "A Chapter in the Life of Mr. Kehoe, Fisherman" | The New Criterion |
| Mary Karr | "A Blessing from My Sixteen Years' Son" | The New Yorker |
| Garret Keizer | "Hell and Love" | Image |
| Brigit Pegeen Kelly | "The Wolf" | 32 poems |
| Galway Kinnell | "Shelley" | The New Yorker |
| Rachel Loden | "In the Graveyard of Fallen Monuments" | Denver Quarterly, Poetry Daily |
| Sarah Manguso | "Hell" | Conduit |
| Heather McHugh | "Ill-Made Almighty" | 32 poems, Verse Daily |
| D. Nurkse | "Space Marriage" | Fence |
| Steve Orlen | "Song: I Love You. Who are You?" | Gulf Coast |
| Eugene Ostashevsky | "Dear Owl" | jubilat |
| Linda Pastan | "Death Is Intended" | Shenandoah |
| Adrienne Rich | "Dislocations: Seven Scenarios" | Boston Review |
| James Richardson | "All the Ghosts" | The Paris Review |
| Mary Ruefle | "How I Became Impossible" | Court Green |
| Kay Ryan | "Home to Roost" | Poetry |
| Jerome Sala | "Media Effects" | Insurance Magazine |
| Mary Jo Salter | "Costanza Bonarelli" | The American Scholar |
| Christine Scanlon | "The Grilled Cheese Sandwich An Elusive Essential to Social Success" | Barrow Street, Good Foot |
| Jason Schneiderman | "Moscow" | Shankpainter |
| Julie Sheehan | "Hate Poem" | Pleiades |
| Charles Simic | "Sunlight" | New England Review |
| Louis Simpson | "An Impasse" | The Hudson Review |
| W.D. Snodgrass | "For Hughes Cuenod — in his 100th year." | The New Criterion, Early Music America |
| Gary Snyder | "Waiting for a Ride" | The New Yorker |
| Maura Stanton | "Twenty Questions" | POOL |
| Dorothea Tanning | "End of the Day on Second" | The Antioch Review |
| James Tate | "The Swing" | New American Writing |
| Chase Twichell | "Marijuana" | The Yale Review |
| David Wagoner | "For a Man Who Wrote CUNT on a Motel Bathroom Mirror" | Hanging Loose |
| Rosanna Warren | "From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine, VII" | The New Yorker, Pleine Marge |
| Marlys West | "Ballad of the Subcontractor" | Notre Dame Review |
| Susan Wheeler | "from The Maud Project" | Salt |
| Richard Wilbur | "Some Words Inside of Words (for children and others)" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Cecilia Woloch | "Bareback Pantoum" | New Letters |
| Charles Wright | "A Short History of My Life" | The New Yorker |
| Matthew Yeager | "A Big Ball of Foil in a Small New York Apartment" | New York Quarterly |
| Kevin Young | "Black Cat Blues" | The Virginia Quarterly Review |