The best American poetry 2009

Foreword / by David Lehman

Introduction / by David Wagoner

They knew what they wanted / John Ashbery

Beasts and violins / Caleb Barber

Concerning the land to the south of our neighbors to the north / Mark Bibbins

Ringtone / Bruce Bond

The doctor / Marianne Boruch

Roofers / Fleda Brown

The book of Steve / Catherine Carter

From The boy's own book: a compleat encyclopedia of all the diversions athletic, scientific, and recreative, of boyhood and youth, by William Clarke / Suzanne Cleary

The great American poem / Billy Collins

The song of America / Rob Cook

Freud / James Cummins

Apparition (favorite poem) / Mark Doty

How it will end / Denise Duhamel

Getting serious / Alice Friman

Black snake / Margaret Gibson

First time reading Freud / Douglas Goetsch

Zones / Albert Goldbarth

The fullness thereof / Barbara Goldberg

Definition of terms / Michael J. Grabell

Eve in the fall / Debora Gregor

The record / Jennifer Grotz

Ode to airheads, hairdos, trains to and from Paris / Barbara Hamby

The safe house / Sarah Hannah

Houses / Jerry Harp

Sunday discordances / Jim Harrison

Grave goods / Dolores Hayden

A house is not a home / Terrance Hayes

The way of all the Earth / K.A. Hays

Mum's the word / Bob Hicok

A democratic vista / Daniel Hoffman

Arthur Englander's back in school / Richard Howard

In winter / P. Hurshell

How to be eaten by a lion / Michael Johnson

To Yahweh / Tina Kelley

What I think of death, if anyone's asking / Maud Kelly

Why do you keep putting animals in your poems? / Lance Larsen

Open field / Phillis Levin

Words on the wind / Philip Levine

Tell the bees / Sarah Lindsay

The happy majority / Thomas Lux

Boarding: Hemaris thysbe / Joanie Mackowski

Sweat / Christine Marshall

Canis / Cleopatra Mathis

Lingering doubts / J.D. McClatchy

The silence of the mine canaries / W.S. Merwin

The insect collector's demise / Jude Nutter

Self-exam / Sharon Olds

Red / Mary Oliver

Insomnia / Linda Pastan

On mercy / Kevin Prufer

Pickled heads: St. Petersburg / Susan Blackwell Ramsey

Turn / Keith Ratzlaff

Tonight no poetry will serve / Adrienne Rich

Subject, verb, object / James Richardson

A blind astronomer in the Age of Stars / Pattiann Rogers

John Clare's finches / Gibbons Ruark

This tape measure made of light / John Rybicki

Gravity and grace / Betsy Sholl

Love / Martha Silano

Like a monkey / Mitch Sisskind

At the pool / Tom Sleigh

At the New York Public Library, I heard Derek Walcott dismiss the prose poem / Vincent Stanley

Forty / Pamela Sutton

Heartlines / Alexandra Teague

Ultimately justice directs them / Craig Morgan Teicher

Liturgy / Natasha Trethewey

A sea-change / Derek Walcott

Holding action / Jeanne Murray Walker

No Pegasus / Ronald Wallace

Her last conflagration / Charles Harper Webb

Leaving Saint Peter's Basilica / Lisa Williams

This dream that world is having about itself

/ Carolyne Wright

Cinderella's last will & testament / Debbie Yee

I shall be released / Kevin Young

Never to return / Matthew Zapruder

Contributors' notes and comments

Magazines where the poems were first published

Acknowledgements.