Foreword / David Lehman -- Introduction / Harold Bloom; Jonathan Aaron -- "Dance Mania" / A.R. Ammons -- "Anxiety's Prosody"; "Garbage"; "From Strip" / John Ashbery -- "Baked Alaska"; "Myrtle"; "The Problem of Anxiety" / Elizabeth Bishop -- "It Is Marvellous..." / George Bradley -- "The Fire Fetched Down" / Lucie Brock-Broido -- "Inevitably, She Declined" / Anne Carson -- "The Life of Towns" / Amy Clampitt -- "My Cousin Muriel" / Douglas Crase -- "True Solar Holiday" / Carolyn Creedon -- "Litany" / Thomas M. Disch -- "The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act" / Irving Feldman -- "Terminal Laughs" / Aaron Fogel -- "The Printer's Error" / Alice Fulton -- "Powers of Congress" / Allen Ginsberg -- "Salutations to Fernando Pessoa" / Louise Gluck -- "Celestial Music"; "Vespers" / Jorie Graham -- "Manifest Destiny"; "What the Instant Contains" / Allen Grossman -- "The Piano Player Explains Himself" / Donald Hall -- "Prophecy"; "The Porcelain Couple" / Vicki Hearne -- "St. Luke Painting the Virgin" / Anthony Hecht -- "Prospects" / Edward Hirsch -- "Man on a Fire Escape" / John Hollander -- "Kinneret"; "An Old-Fashioned Song"; "The See-Saw" / Richard Howard -- "Like Most Revelations" / Donald Justice -- "Nostalgia of the Lakefronts"; "Invitation to a Ghost" / Brigit Pegeen Kelly -- "The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery" / Jane Kenyon -- "Three Songs at the End of Summer" / Galway Kinnell -- "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone" / Karl Kirchwey -- "Sonogram" / Kenneth Koch -- "One Train May Hide Another" / Yusef Komunyakaa -- "Facing It"/ Ann Lauterbach -- "Psyche's Dream" / Philip Levine -- "Scouting" / Harry Mathews -- "Histoire" / J.D. McClatchy -- "An Essay on Friendship" / James Merrill -- "A Room at the Heart of Things"; "The 'Ring' Cycle"; "Family Week at Oracle Ranch" / W.S. Merwin -- "The Stranger" / Susan Mitchell -- "Havana Birth" / A.F. Moritz -- "Protracted Episode" / Thylias Moss -- "The Warmth of Hot Chocolate" / Brighde Mullins -- "At the Lakehouse" / Molly Peacock -- "Have You Ever Faked an Orgasm?" / Bob Perelman -- "Movie" / Carl Phillips -- "A Mathematics of Breathing" / Kay Ryan -- "Outsider Art" / Grace Schulman -- "The Present Perfect" / David Shapiro -- "The Seasons" / Charles Simic -- "Country Fair"; "The Something" / Gary Snyder -- "Ripples on the Surface" / Mark Strand -- "Reading in Place"; "From Dark Harbor"; "Morning, Noon and Night" / May Swenson -- "Sleeping with Boa" / Derek Walcott -- "Omeros" / Rosanna Warren -- "The Cormorant"; "Diversion" / Susan Wheeler -- "What Memory Reveals" / Richard Wilbur -- "Lying"; "A Wall in the Woods: Cummington" / Charles Wright -- "Disjecta Membra" / Jay Wright -- "Madrid"; "The Cradle Logic of Autumn" ; Contributors' Notes and Comments ; Excerpts from the Introductions with Headnotes / David Lehman -- John Ashbery -- Donald Hall -- Jorie Graham -- Mark Strand -- Charles Simic -- Louise Gluck -- A.R. Ammons -- Richard Howard -- Adrienne Rich -- James Tate -- David Lehman -- Acknowledgments -- Cumulative Series Index.