# The Best American Poetry 2006

The Best American Poetry 2006, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman (general editor), and poet Billy Collins, guest editor.
The volume received some negative reviews. A review in the RATTLE by G. Tod Stone stated that "[w]hat establishment-order literati like Lehman and Collins are succeeding in doing, more than anything else, is keeping American poetry from being the best."
On the other hand, and more positively, James Owens wrote in the Pedestal Review that "[r]eaders who care about poetry need The Best American Poetry 2006. Get it. Read it. Just don’t stop there." ; writing in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Marion K. Stocking, remarked that "If a selection of the poets in Collins’s collection went on the road with their poems they should be reading to packed houses."

## Poets and poems included

| Poet | Poem | Publication(s) where poem previously appeared |
| Kim Addonizio | "Verities" | Poetry |
| Dick Allen | "See the Pyramids Along the Nile" | Boulevard |
| Craig Arnold | from "Couple from Hell" | Barrow Street |
| John Ashbery | "A Worldly Country" | The New Yorker |
| Jesse Ball | "Speech in a Chamber" | The Paris Review |
| Krista Benjamin | "Letter from My Ancestors" | Margie |
| Ilya Bernstein | "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" | Fulcrum |
| Gaylord Brewer | "Apologia to the Blue Tit" | River Styx |
| Tom Christopher | "Rhetorical Figures" | Hayden's Ferry Review |
| Laura Cronk | "Sestina for the Newly Married" | LIT |
| Carl Dennis | "Our Generation" | The Kenyon Review |
| Stephen Dobyns | "Toward Some Bright Moment" | American Poetry Review |
| Denise Duhamel | "Please Don't Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen" | Columbia Poetry Review |
| Stephen Dunn | "The Land of Is" | The Georgia Review |
| Beth Ann Fennelly | "Souvenir" | Shenandoah |
| Megan Gannon | "List of First Lines" | Third Coast |
| Amy Gerstler | "For My Niece Sidney, Age Six" | American Poetry Review |
| Sarah Gorham | "Bust of a Young Boy in the Snow" | Five Points |
| George Green | "The Death of Winckelmann" | The New Criterion |
| Debora Greger | "My First Mermaid" | The Kenyon Review |
| Eamon Grennan | "The Curve" | Five Points |
| Daniel Gutstein | "Monsieur Pierre est mort" | Rhino |
| R. S. Gwynn | from "Sects from A to Z" | Poetry |
| Rachel Hadas | "Bird, Weasel, Fountain" | The Cincinnati Review |
| Mark Halliday | "Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Jim Harrison | "On the Way to the Doctor's" | New Letters |
| Robert Hass | "The Problem of Describing Color" | The New Yorker |
| Christian Hawkey | "Hour" | CROWD |
| Terrance Hayes | "Talk" | Gulf Coast |
| Bob Hicok | "My career as a director" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Katia Kapovich | "The Ferry" | Harvard Review |
| Laura Kasischke | "At Gettysburg" | New England Review |
| Joy Katz | "Just a second ago" | The Cincinnati Review |
| David Kirby | "Seventeen Ways from Tuesday" | Subtropics |
| Jennifer L. Knox | "The Laws of Probability in Levittown" | The Hat |
| Ron Koertge | "Found" | Iodine Poetry Journal |
| John Koethe | "Sally's Hair" | The Kenyon Review |
| Mark Kraushaar | "Tonight" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Julie Larios | "Double Abecedarian: Please Give Me" | The Georgia Review |
| Dorianne Laux | "Demographic" | The Alaska Quarterly Review |
| Reb Livingston | "That's Not Butter" | MiPoesias |
| Thomas Lux | "Eyes Scooped Out and Replaced by Hot Coals" | Five Points |
| Paul Muldoon | "Blenheim" | Five Points |
| Marilyn Nelson | "Albert Hinckley" | The Cincinnati Review |
| Richard Newman | "Briefcase of Sorrow" | Crab Orchard Review |
| Mary Oliver | "The Poet with His Face in His Hands" | The New Yorker |
| Danielle Pafunda | "Small Town Rocker" | The Canary |
| Mark Pawlak | "The Sharper the Berry" | New American Writing |
| Bao Phi | "Race" | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Donald Platt | "Two Poets Meet" | Iowa Review |
| Lawrence Raab | "The Great Poem" | Nightsun |
| Betsy Retallack | "Roadside Special" | Endicott Review |
| Liz Rosenberg | "The Other Woman's Point of View" | The Kenyon Review |
| J. Allyn Rosser | "Discounting Lynn" | failbetter.com |
| Kay Ryan | "Thin" | Poetry |
| Mary Jo Salter | "A Phone Call to the Future" | The Georgia Review |
| Vejay Sheshadri | "Memoir" | The New Yorker |
| Alan Shapiro | "Misjudged Fly Ball" | The Cincinnati Review |
| Charles Simic | "House of Cards" | The Virginia Quarterly Review |
| Gerald Stern | "Homesick" | Ecotone |
| James Tate | "The Loser" | Crazyhorse |
| Sue Ellen Thompson | "Body English" | Connecticut Review |
| Tony Towle | "Misprision" | LIT |
| Alison Townsend | "What I Never Told You About the Abortion" | Margie |
| Paul Violi | "Counterman" | Shiny International |
| Ellen Bryant Voigt | "Harvesting the Cows" | The Kenyon Review |
| David Wagoner | "The Driver" | Margie |
| Charles Harper Webb | "Prayer to Tear the Sperm-Dam Down" | Atlanta Review |
| C. K. Williams | "Ponies" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Terence Winch | "Sex Elegy" | Verse |
| Susan Wood | "Gratification" | Five Points |
| Franz Wright | "A Happy Thought" | FIELD |
| Robert Wrigley | "Religion" | The Gettysburg Review |
| David Yezzi | "The Call" | New England Review |
| Dean Young | "Clam Ode" | POOL |