Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Kim Addonizio
delete“Cigar Box Banjo”
deleteCigar Box Banjo Reflection
David Baker
delete“Nineteen Spikes”
deleteWriting in Peril
Aliki Barnstone
delete“Scripture for Coronavirus”
deleteOn Writing “Scripture for Coronavirus”: E Pluribus Unum
Erin Belieu
delete“With Birds”
deleteNotes on “With Birds”
Richard Blanco
delete“Looking for The Gulf Motel”
deleteMemory as Homeland
David Bottoms
delete“Under the Vulture-Tree"
deleteUnder the Vulture-Tree on the Wakulla River
Earl Sherman Braggs
delete“Sandy Columbine Hook Parkland”
deleteWhat We Come to Know, What Comes to Know
Fred Chappell
delete“The Departures”
deleteThey
Chen Chen
delete“The School of Night & Hyphens”
deleteTelling the Truth About Love
Marilyn Chin
delete“Bamboo, the Dance”
deletePoetry of Necessity
Ama Codjoe
delete“Burying Seeds”
deleteOn Composing “Burying Seeds”
Stephen Corey
delete“History of My Present”
deleteThe History of “History of My Present”
Chad Davidson
delete“Putting In”
deleteThe Tricky Business of Elegies
Denise Duhamel
delete“Recession Commandments”
deleteLies I Told Myself
Camille Dungy
delete“One Night in 1888, as the French steamboat Abd-el-Kader”
deleteOne Night in 1888
Stephen Dunn
delete“Elementary”
deleteResuscitating the “Elementary” Poem
Cornelius Eady
delete“Baldwin”
deleteWriting “Baldwin”
Martín Espada
delete“Letter to My Father”
deleteNotes on “Letter to My Father”
Beth Ann Fennelly
delete“What I Think About When Someone Uses ‘Pussy’ as a Synonym for ‘Weak’”
deleteOut of the Quarrel with Others
Annie Finch
delete“A Root”
deleteThe Roots of “A Root”
Greg Fraser
delete“The Good News”
deleteDelivering “The Good News”
Alice Friman
delete“Under a Blind Eye”
deleteConfession: On “Under a Blind Eye”
Ángel García
delete“Barely”
deleteThe Man Inside the Poem
Margaret Gibson
delete“Exchange”
deleteOn Writing “Exchange”
Nikki Giovanni
delete“Knoxville, Tennessee”
deleteIt’s Your Decision When You Want to Share
Beth Gylys
delete“My Father’s Nightmare”
deleteMy Father’s Daughter: Sex, Lies, and Telling It Slant
Janice N. Harrington
delete“Layered Pigments”
deleteThe Layered Pigments of Elegy and Racial History
Terrance Hayes
delete“A POEM BY YOU” delete
Edward Hirsch
delete“For the Sleepwalkers”
deleteSomething Wonderful
Jane Hirshfield
delete“Today, When I Could Do Nothing”
deleteOn Writing “Today, When I Could Do Nothing”
Christine Kitano
delete“Dumb Luck”
deleteWhat is the Ethnicity of the Speaker?
Yusef Komunyakaa
delete“My Good Hand Plays God”
deleteThe Hands
Ted Kooser
delete“An Entrance”
deletePoems of Gesture
Dorianne Laux
delete“Facts About the Moon”
deleteLove in Spite of the Facts
Sandra Lim
delete“A Tab of Iron on the Tongue”
deleteThe Lunacy of Lyric Poetry
Adrian Matejka
delete“Gymnopédies No. 2”
deleteWhat Really Happened
Airea D. Matthews
delete“If my late grandmother were Gertrude Stein”
deleteIf Ain’t
Campbell McGrath
delete“The Ladder”
deleteIn the Castle of the Stranger
Dunya Mikhail
delete“The Stranger in Her Feminine Sign”
deleteFemale Slave Market
Robert Morgan
delete“Sigodlin”
deleteThe World Made Plumb
David Mura
delete“South Carolina Sea Island”
deleteWalking with Ghosts
Marilyn Nelson
delete“The Tulsa Convulsion”
deleteFamily Trip to Oklahoma, 2018
Laura Newbern
delete“Novella”
deleteOn “Novella”
Annemarie Ní Churreáin
delete“Six Ways to Wash Your Hands (Ayliffe 1978)”
deleteIn the Shadow of Men Who Wanted to Conquer Wildness
Alicia Ostriker
delete“Listen”
delete“Listen”: A Mother-Daughter Poem and How It Grew
Frank Paino
delete“Swallow”
deleteWriting My Obsessions
Sara Pirkle
delete“What Hurts”
deleteListing and Listening
John Poch
delete“Denzel Sestina”
deleteDenzel &
Paisley Rekdal
delete“Wild Horses”
deleteOn Wild Horses
Alberto Ríos
delete“Refugio’s Hair”
deleteThe Story Is Relative
Tim Seibles
delete“Movie”
deleteThe Making of “Movie”
Vijay Seshadri
delete“Trailing Clouds of Glory”
deleteSenate Bill 1070 and “Trailing Clouds of Glory”
Patricia Smith
delete“Coo Coo Cachoo”
deleteA Badass Woman Revises, Never Compromises
Virgil Suárez
delete“The Cotton Ball Queen”
deleteNursing People Back to Health
Mai Der Vang
delete“Prayer to the Redwood”
deleteEver More Poems: A Poetics of Creation and Abundance
William Walsh
delete“Why Otters Hold Hands”
deleteWhen a Young Woman Must
Afaa M. Weaver
delete“Thelonius”
deleteLiner Notes for “Thelonius”
Artress Bethany White
delete“Vibrio Cholerae”
deleteDocumenting Freedom at the Intersection of History
and Disease in “Vibrio Cholerae”
Carey Scott Wilkerson
delete“Summer’s End”
deletePoetry and Paradox and the Oracles of the Neighborhood
William Wright
delete“To a Minor Chinese Poet of the Kunlun Mountains”
deletePersonal Grief as Empathetic Imagination
Jenny Xie
delete“Melancholia”
deleteProbing Opacity
Monica Youn
delete“A Guide to Usage: Mine”
deleteMining the Word
Contributor Notes
Credits and Permissions
Index
