The best American poetry, 1992

Dance mania / Jonathan Aaron

I see Chile in my rearview mirror / Agha Shahid Ali

The ungrateful citizens / John Ash

Poem at the New Year / John Ashbery

Midwestern Villanelle

Robin Behn

How I painted certain of my pictures / Charles Bernstein

Healing / George Bilgere

Dear, my compass ... / Elizabeth Bishop

The crippled Godwit / Robert Bly

Inevitably, she declined / Lucie Brock-Broido

Homage to Gerolamo Marcello / Joseph Brodsky

Sex / Hayden Carruth

Nostalgia / Billy Collins

Other / Robert Creeley

Famous women

Claudette Colbert /

Kathleen de Azevedo

Spring letter / Carl Dennis

My Amaryllis /

Deborah Digges

Smiles / Stephen Dunn

The bright waterfall of angels / Susan Firer

A little heart-to-heart with the horizon / Alice Fulton

We're all pharaohs when we die / Tess Gallagher

On wanting to grow horns / Amy Gerstler

Voices inside and out / Jack Gilbert

Vespers / Louise Glück

Body will / Jill Gonet

Manifest destiny / Jorie Graham

Poland of death (IV) / Allen Grossman

Elysian fields / Marilyn Hacker

Spring Glen Grammar School / Donald Hall

Infidelities / Daniel Halpern

My mother's nipples / Robert Hass

St. Luke painting the Virgin / Vicki Hearne

Iowa blues bar spiritual / Juan Felipe Herrer

Man on a fire escape / Edward Hirsch

Identities / Daniel Hoffman

Days of autumn / John Hollander

Like most revelations / Richard Howard

Lost fugue for Chet / Lynda Hull

Some sort of chronicler I am / Lawrence Joseph

The man on the hotel room bed / Kinnell Galway

Twelve o'clock / Carolyn Kizer

Admission of failure / Phyllis Koestenbaum

Mystery stories / Sharon Krinsky

Four variations on the sonnet / Maxine Kumin

Green / Evelyn Lau

This hour and what is dead / Li-Young Lee

Across these landscapes of early darkness / Dionisio D. Martínez

All Hallows' Eve / Mekeel McBride

'... The storm is passing over'; she sang / James McCorkle

Terminal / Jerry McGuire

Choosing an author for assurance in the night / Sandra McPherson

Honey / Robert Morgan

An anointing

Thylias Moss

Red trousseau / Carol Muske

Rain / Mary Oliver

Eighth sky / Michael Palmer

Avenue / Robert Pinsky

The sudden appearance of a monster at a window / Lawrence Raab

The night the lightning bugs lit last in the field then went their way / Liam Rector

Plenitude / Donald Revell

For a friend in Travail / Adrienne Rich

We sat, so patient / Len Roberts

Lucifer in starlight / David St. John

Trial / Lynda Schraufnagel

Good Friday. Driving westward / Elizabeth Spires

I want to marry you / Rachel Srubas

Anatolian Journey / Richard Tillinghast

Kamelopart / Lewis Turco

Word silence / Chase Twichell

Necrophiliac / Rosanna Warren

Eyeglasses / Ioanna-Veronika Warwick

The knot / C.K. Williams

Winter-worship / Charles Wright

Depiction of childhood / Franz Wright

Vertumnal / Stephen Yenser.