Foreword / by David Lehman -- Introduction / by Amy Gerstler -- "What you have to get over" / Dick Allen -- "Alcove" / John Ashberry -- "Unit of measure" / Sandra Beasley -- "The devil you don't" / Mark Bibbins -- "My dog has no nose" / Todd Boss -- "The dead" / Fleda Brown -- "Wildly constant" / Anne Carson -- "Fidelity" / Tom Clark -- "This poem had better be about the world we actually live in" / David Clewell -- "An individual history" / Michael Collier -- "Grave" / Billy Collins -- "Ugly man" / Dennis Cooper -- From "A walk in Victoria's secret" / Kate Daniels -- Four "Addresses" / Peter Davis -- "Come in from the rain" / Tim Dlugos -- "Play" / Denise Duhamel -- "Presidential blackness" / Thomas Sayers Ellis -- "Dear Final Journey," / Lynn Emanuel -- "What is it about hands?" / Elaine Equi -- "Apologia" / Jill Alexander Essbaum -- "On the waterfront" / B.H. Fairchild -- "Smoke under the bale" / Vievee Francis -- "At the river" / Louise Glück -- "What's left" / Albert Goldbarth -- "Namaskar" / Amy Glynn Greacen -- "Passing the barnyard graveyard" / Sonia Greenfield -- "Oh dont" / Kelle Groom -- "And what, friends, is called a road?" / Gabriel Gudding -- "The poetic memoirs of Lady Daibu" / Kimiko Hahn -- Five "Lingo sonnets" / Barbara Hamby -- "I just want to look" / Terrance Hayes -- "The cunning optimism of language" / Bob Hicok -- "North Alabama endtime" / Rodney Jones -- "If I ring my body like a bell of coins, will the shock waves of that sound cause oil rigs & volcanoes to erupt?" / Michaela Kahn -- "Rome" / Brigit Pegeen Kelly -- Six from "Birds of self-knowledge" / Corinne Lee -- "The old woman gets drunk with the moon" / Hailey Leithauser -- "I never went to that movie at 12:45" / Dolly Lemke -- "A man with a rooster in his dream" / Maurice Manning -- "Seven days of falling" / Adrian Matejka -- "Pietà" / Shane McCrae -- "The grudge" / Jeffrey McDaniel -- "Identity" / W.S. Merwin -- "Letter to the past after long silence" / Sarah Murphy -- "The perfect faceless fish" / Eileen Myles -- "The prison diary of Bartlett Yancey Malone" / Camille Norton -- From "Eurynome's sandals" / Alice Notley -- "Q" / Sharon Olds -- "Written by himself" / Gregory Pardlo -- "Inseminating the elephant" / Lucia Perillo -- "Heaven and earth" / Carl Phillips -- "Domain" / Adrienne Rich -- "Vectors 2.3: 50 aphorisms and ten-second essays" / James Richardson -- "Children's children speech" / J. Allyn Rosser -- "Having my say-so" / James Schuyler -- "Allison Wolff" / Tim Seibles -- "A visit" / David Shapiro -- "Carrying on like a crow" / Charles Simic -- "Blue yodel of those who were always telling me" / Frank Stanford -- "Stoop" / Gerald Stern -- "SATs" / Stephen Campbell Sutherland -- "Depression" / James Tate -- "Black telephone" / David Trinidad -- "The dark rides" / Chase Twichell -- "Peggy Lutz, Fred Muth 12/13/08" / John Updike -- "21" / Derek Walcott -- "Their faces shall be as flames" / G.C. Waldrep -- "In the field" / J.E. Wei -- "Something for you because you have been gone" / Dara Wier -- "Objects of spiritual significance" / Terence Winch -- "The darker sooner" / Catherine Wing -- "Coyote, with mange" / Mark Wunderlich -- From "A jar of balloons, or The uncooked rice" / Matthew Yeager -- "Off the hook ode" / Dean Young -- "Lime light blues" / Kevin Young -- Contributors' notes and comments -- Magazines where the poems were first published -- Acknowledgements.