Includes bibliographical references.

Surprised by joy... impatient as the Wind / William Wordsworth -- This living hand / John Keats -- I am / John Clare -- In Memoriam, VII / Alfred, Lord Tennyson -- Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend / Gerard Manley Hopkins -- The God Abandons Antony / Constantine Cavafy -- The Voice / Thomas Hardy -- The Owl / Edward Thomas -- The Pretty Redhead / Guillaume Apollinaire -- What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why / Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Song for a Dark Girl / Langston Hughes -- Rooms / Charlotte Mew -- Black Stone Lying on a White Stone / C©♭sar Vallejo -- I'm Going to Sleep / Alfonsina Storni -- To Julia de Burgos / Julia de Burgos -- In Memory of M. B. / Anna Akhmatova -- The Fifth Eclogue / Mikl©đs Radn©đti -- Caf©♭ / Czesław Miłosz -- Merciful God / Kadya Molodowsky -- Shemà / Primo Levi -- On Living / N©Øzim Hikmet -- Aspects of Robinson / Weldon Kees -- The rites for Cousin Vit / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Not Waving but Drowning / Stevie Smith -- In the Midst of Life / Tadeusz R©đ¿ơewicz -- On the road at night there stands the man / Dahlia Ravikovitch -- Poem of the Gifts / Jorge Luis Borges -- In the Park / Gwen Harwood -- The Whipping / Robert Hayden -- Night Sweat / Robert Lowell -- Wanting to Die / Anne Sexton -- My Nightingale / Rose Ausl©Þnder -- Next Day / Randall Jarrell -- Montana Fifty Years Ago / J. V. Cunningham -- For the Anniversary of My Death / W. S. Merwin -- Poem / Muriel Rukeyser -- The Idea of Ancestry / Etheridge Knight -- Henry's Understanding / John Berryman -- A Deathplace / L. E. Sissman -- They Feed They Lion / Philip Levine -- The Small Square / Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen -- Under One Small Star / Wisława Szymborska -- Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg / Richard Hugo -- On This Side of the River / Stephen Berg -- Aubade / Philip Larkin -- Parents / William Meredith -- Essay / Hayden Carruth -- Arches / James Schuyler -- Kindness / Naomi Shihab Nye -- The Woman on the Bridge over the Chicago River / Allen Grossman -- The Book of Yolek / Anthony Hecht -- Mr Cogito and the Imagination / Zbigniew Herbert -- From My Window / C. K. Williams -- Night Song / Louise Gl©ơck -- The Race / Sharon Olds -- In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn / Donald Justice -- The Dancing / Gerald Stern -- For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live) / Joy Harjo -- Mendocino Rose / Garrett Hongo -- (Dedications) / Adrienne Rich -- The Gas-poker / Thom Gunn -- What He Thought / Heather McHugh -- It Allows a Portrait in Line-Scan at Fifteen / Les Murray -- The People of the Other Village / Thomas Lux -- For the Taking / Linda Gregerson -- Terminus / Nicholas Christopher -- What the Living Do / Marie Howe -- The War Works Hard / Dunya Mikhail -- Halley's Comet / Stanley Kunitz -- Song / Brigit Pegeen Kelly -- Simile / Rosanna Warren -- In Memory of Joe Brainard / Frank Bidart -- jasper texas 1998 / Lucille Clifton -- The Rapture / Cynthia Huntington -- Elementary Principles at Seventy-Two / Richard Howard -- Quarantine / Eavan Boland -- Woman Martyr / Agi Mishol -- We Are Not Responsible / Harryette Mullen -- Shelley / Galway Kinnell -- Aphasia / Vijay Seshadri -- On Wanting to Tell [ ] About a Girl Eating Fish Eyes / Mary Szybist -- Lead / Mary Oliver -- Persimmon / Anya Krugovoy Silver -- Ethel's Sestina / Patricia Smith -- Woman, Mined / Carolyn Creedon -- Graveyard Blues / Natasha Trethewey -- Requiem / Camille Dungy -- Aubade in Autumn / Peter Everwine -- Barton Springs / Tony Hoagland -- Failure / Philip Schultz -- An Individual History / Michael Collier -- The Second Slaughter / Lucia Perillo -- Old School / Michael Waters -- Infinite Riches in the Smallest Room / Lucie Brock-Broido -- The African Burial Ground / Yusef Komunyakaa -- The Addict's Mother: Birth Story / Kate Daniels -- Spirit Boxing / Afaa Micahel Weaver -- Obit [The Blue Dress] / Victoria Chang -- Pantoum for the Broken / Toi Derricotte -- Krishna, 3:29 A.M. / Meena Alexander.