American Poetry Now: Pitt Poetry Series Anthology / Edition 1

by Ed Ochester

Overview

American Poetry Now is a comprehensive collection of the best work from the renowned Pitt Poetry Series. Since its inception in 1967, the series has been a vehicle for America's finest contemporary poets. The series list includes Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Toi Derricotte, Denise Duhamel, Lynn Emanuel, Bob Hicok, Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser, Larry Levis, Sharon Olds, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Virgil Suárez, Afaa Michael Weaver, David Wojahn, Dean Young, and many others.

Throughout its forty-year history, the Pitt Poetry Series has provided a voice for the diversity that is American poetry, representing poets from many backgrounds without allegiance to any one school or style. American Poetry Now is a true representation of contemporary American poetry.

Ed Ochester, series editor for nearly thirty years, has assembled a quintessential selection-along with biographies and photos, an enlightening introduction, and a suggested list for further reading, all in a highly accessible format. American Poetry Now is a sweeping anthology that will delight poetry fans, students, teachers, and general readers alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822959649
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/08/2007
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ed Ochester has been editor of the Pitt Poetry Series since 1978. He is former director of the creative writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, and is professor emeritus of English there. Currently, Ochester is a core faculty member of the Bennington College MFA Writing Seminars. He has twice served as president of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and recently received the organization's George Garrett. Ochester is the author of over fourteen volumes of poetry, including Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New (2007), The Land of Cockaigne, Cooking in Key West, and Changing the Name to Ochester. He is founding editor of the literary magazine 5 AM.

Table of Contents

Introduction     xix   Maggie Anderson     1
Spitting in the Leaves     2
Heart Fire     2
Long Story     3
Black Dog Goes to Art Colony     6
Self-Portrait     6   Dorothy Barresi     8
The Post-Rapture Diner     9
The Nude Detective, A Complaint     9
Sock Hop with the New Critics     11
Glass Dress     12
Body Says     14   Quan Barry     16
The exiled (from "child of the enemy")     17
Intermurals     18
Tradition     19
Crossing the South China Sea as analgesia     20
Emmett Till's Open Casket as La Pieta     21
Doug Flutie's 1984 Orange Bowl Hail Mary as Water into Fire     21   Jan Beatty     23
Mad River     24
Ravenous Blue     24
A Waitress' Instructions on Tipping or Get the Cash Up and Don't Waste My Time     25
After sex on a train     26
My Father Teaches Me to Dream     26
Going Deep for Jesus     27
Zen of Tipping     28
Machine Shop of Love     29   Robin Becker     31
The New Egypt     32
Now     32
OK, Tucker     33
Adult Child     34
Why We Fear the Amish     34
Spiritual Morning     35
The Bath     36
The Story I Like to Tell     36   Richard Blanco     38
America     39
The Silver Sands     41
El Cucubano     42
Tia Olivia Serves Wallace Stevens a Cuban Egg     43   Christopher Bursk     45
Dr. Livingstone, I Presume     46
The Barbarians     47
One Nation, Indivisible, Under God     48
The World of Business     49   Anthony Butts     51
Blue Movie     52
Eros and Thanatos     53
Trying to Be Human     54
Forgiveness     55
Heritage     6   Lorna Dee Cervantes     58
Emplumada     59
Meeting Mescalito at Oak Hill Cemetery     59
Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway     60
Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races     63   Wanda Coleman     66
Lady Sings the Blues 1969     67
Los Angeles Nocturne     68
Soul Traveler     69
Baptism     70
Exoteric     71   Billy Collins     72
I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"     73
Shoveling Snow with Buddha     74
This Much I Do Remember     75
Japan     76
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes     78
The Death of the Hat     79   Mark Cox     81
Pail of Eggs     82
Sill     82
Like a Simile     84
Style     85
Natural Causes     85
After Rain     86
Ashes, Ashes     87   Jim Daniels     88
Raw October     89
Digger Pays Off the Mortgage     89
Digger's Territory     90
Still Lives; Sweat     91
Trouble at the Drive-In     92
Blessing the House     93   Chard Deniord     95
Raiding the Bees      96
To Hear and Hear     96
Frog     97
Whales     97
Night Mowing     98
Through a Train Window     98
An incident at the Catholic Worker     99
I See Them Now     100   Toi Derricotte     101
Blackbottom     102
Boy at the Paterson Falls     103
In an Urban School     103
Allen Ginsburg     104
The Struggle     105
Grace Paley Reading     105
When My Father Was Beating Me     106   Denise Duhamel     108
Kinky     109
Sex with a Famous Poet     110
The Difference between Pepsi and Pope     111
Nick at Nite     113
The Problem with Woody Allen     114
Noah and Joan     115   Russell Edson     117
The Secret Graveyard     118
The Key     118
Baby Pianos     119
The Alfresco Moment     119
The Message     119
The Square Wheel     120
Angels     120
The Bath     121
Thus Spake Polly      121
Wings     121   Lynn Emanuel     123
Inside gertrude stein     124
Halfway Through the Book I'm Writing     125
Homage to Sharon Stone     126
Portrait of the Author     128   Peter Everwine     130
Drinking Cold Water     131
Perhaps It's as You Say     132
Sorting the Tools     132
In the Last Days     133
Poem Beginning with a Line from Leonardo Sinisgalli     134
From the Meadow     135
The Heart     136   Edward Field     137
Frankenstein     138
Nancy     139
Unwanted     141
The Tailspin     142
In Praise of My Prostate     142
The Lost, Dancing     143
Garbo     144   Daisy Fried     145
She Didn't Mean to Do It     146
A Story Having to Do with Walt Whitman     146
Whatever Works     148
Aunt Leah, Aunt Sophie and the Negro Painter     148   Barbara Hamby     152
Ode to American English     153
The Mockingbird on the Buddha     154
Ode to the Potato     155
Fang     155
Ode to Rock 'n' Roll     156
Ode to My 1977 Toyota     157   C. G. Hanzlicek     159
Egg     160
The Cave     161
Blue Light     162
Moment     165   Bob Hicok     167
Twins     168
Team effort     169
My new neighbor     169
Beasts     170
Full flight     174   Gray Jacobik     176
Pollock's Paintings     177
The Shabby Truth     178
Breasts     180
The Lizard Man     180   Julia Kasdorf     182
What I Learned from My Mother     183
Mennonites     183
When Our Women Go Crazy     184
First Gestures     185
Eve's Striptease     186
The Sun Lover     187
Sinning     188   Jesse Lee Kercheval     190
Enter Mecca     191
Not     192
What Max, Age Two, Remembers about Spain      193
The Great Molasses Flood     195   Etheridge Knight     197
Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane     198
He Sees Through Stone     199
The Idea of Ancestry     200
The Warden Said to Me the Other Day     201
Feeling Fucked Up     202
Welcome Back, Mr. Knight: Love of My Life     202
Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine     203
Rehabilitation & Treatment in the Prisons of America     204   Sandra Kohler     206
The Game     207
The Pond     207
The End of the Gulf War     208
Tea     209
Write     210   Ted Kooser     211
Selecting a Reader     212
A Frozen Stream     212
The Very Old     213
How to Make Rhubarb Wine     214
A Widow     215
Fort Robinson     215
Shooting a Farmhouse     215
Flying at Night     216
Laundry     217
At the Office Early     217
Year's End     218   Larry Levis     219
Winter Stars      220
My Story in a Late Style of Fire     221
The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.     223
The Smell of the Sea     224   Shara McCallum     227
Sunset on the Wharf     228
Jamaica, October 18, 1972     228
What my mother taught me     229
Calypso     229
What the Oracle Said     230
An Offering     231
Facing It     232   Peter Meinke     233
Sonnet on the Death of the Man Who Invented Plastic Roses     234
(Untitled)     234
The Poet, Trying to Surprise God     235
Liquid Paper     235
Atomic Pantoum     236
Zinc Fingers     237
A Meditation on You and Wittgenstein     238
Preacher, Said the General     239   Malena Morling     241
If There Is Another World     242
Happiness     243
Gone     243
Simply Lit     245
Seemed Pleased     246
In the Yellow Head of a Tulip     248
A Wake     249   Kathleen Norris     250
Perennials      251
Young Lovers with Pizza     252
Eve of St. Agnes in the High School Gym     253
How I Came to Drink My Grandmother's Piano     254
Afterward     255
Emily in Choir     256   Sharon Olds     257
Satan Says     258
Quake Theory     259
Indictment of Senior Officers     260
The Sisters of Sexual Treasure     261
Station     261
The Language of the Brag     262
Seventh Birthday of the First Child     263
The Unjustly Punished Child     264
The Mother     264   Alicia Suskin Ostriker     265
The Leaf Pile     266
A Question of Time     267
Everywoman Her Own Theology     269
The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz     270
What Was Lost     270
Fix     272   Minnie Bruce Pratt     273
The Blue Cup     274
Learning to Write     274
From "Crime Against Nature" (1)     275
From "Crime Against Nature" (6)     276
Walking Back Up Depot Street     277
Chopping Peppers      279   Paisley Rekdal     280
A Pornography     281
Dear Lacuna, Dear Lard     282
Ode     283   Richard Shelton     287
The Creep     288
If I Were a Dog     289
The Little Towns of West Texas     290
In Search of History     291
Politics Last Summer     292
Miranda of the Sorrows     293   Reginald Shepherd     295
Maritime     296
A Plague for Kit Marlowe     297
World     299
Semantics at Four P.M.     300   Cathy Song     302
The Day Has Come When My Mother     303
My Beautiful Daughter Calls to Tell Melt's Snowing     303
The Souls We Carry Hunger for Our Light     305
I Hated the Hairy Ones     306
Cloud Moving Hands     308   Virgil Suarez     310
In the House of White Light     311
Recitative after Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp"     312
Isla     313
American Drag Rhapsody: J. Edgar Hoover in Havana     314
La Florida      315
Purple Finch     316
The What of Rocks     318   Ronald Wallace     319
A Hot Property     320
Sestina for the House     320
Nightline: An Interview with the General     322
Fielding     322
The Friday Night Fights     323
Off the Record     323
In the Amish Bakery     324
Pantoum: The Sturdy of Worry     325
Man Sleeping     326
Blessings     326   AFAA Michael Weaver     328
Ego     329
Sidney Bechet     329
The Picnic, An Homage to Civil Rights     330
The Shaw Brothers     331
19 Pages with No Promotion     332   David Wojahn     333
E-mail (from "Dithyramb and Lamentation")     334
"Mystery Train": Janis Joplin Leaves Port Arthur for Points West, 1964 (from "Mystery Train: A Sequence")     334
"It's Only Rock 'n' Roll but I Like It": The Fall of Saigon, 1975 (from "Mystery Train: A Sequence")     335
The Assassination of John Lennon as Depicted by the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum, Niagara Falls, Ontario, 1987 (from "Mystery Train: A Sequence")     336
Excavation Photo      337
Stammer     338
And the Unclean Spirits Went Out of the Man, and Entered into Swine     339
Homage to Blind Willie Johnson     340   Dean Young     342
Chapped Lips     343
Dog Toy     344
Sources of the Delaware     346
Lives of the Olympians     348
Lives of the Robots     349
From The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser     351
Poem     353
The Bill (from "The Book of the Dead")     353
Bubble of Air     356
Children, the Sandbar, that Summer     356
The Conjugation of the Paramecium     357
In Our Time     358
Endless     358
What Do We See?     359
Myth     360
From "Breaking Open (Rational Man)"     360
Looking at Each Other     361
Suggestions for Further Reading     363

Editorial Reviews

Amazing. This collection shows a wise choice and a consistent high level of achievement-not to mention what a joy it is to read. I don't think another press could do this.”
—Gerald Stern


“This is a damn good anthology, full of pleasures, unexpected discoveries, and instruction for any reader. It presents a real diversity of contemporary poetic sensibilities—the hip and the earnest, the politically urgent and the linguistically baroque. The consistent freshness and substance here show why the Pitt Poetry Series has played a key role in American poetry for the last thirty-odd years.”
—Tony Hoagland



"This collection is a testament to the heroic work the Press and Ed Ochester have done on behalf of the art—a lively, vital legacy."
—Mark Doty

From the Publisher