Best Poems of 1992

Oswald de Andrade ….. National Library
Eleanor Antin ….. A Certain Color (from Painter Poems)
Author Unknown ….. One Bright Morning …
Author Unknown ….. Up and Down the City Road …
A’yunini / Cherokee ….. The Killer
Ronald Baatz ….. These Cold Mountains
Michael Benedikt ….. The Golden Years
George Brecht ….. Six Exhibits
Karen Brodine ….. The Room Poised Outside the Window
Joaquim Cardozo ….. Elegy for Maria Alves
Jorge Carrera Andrade ….. Biography for the Use of the Birds
Lewis Carroll ….. Brother and Sister
Lewis Carroll ….. The Gardener’s Song
Lewis Carroll ….. Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll ….. My Fairy
Lewis Carroll ….. The Walrus and the Carpenter
Alan Catlin ….. Still Life with Martini
C. P. Cavafy ….. The Afternoon Sun
C. P. Cavafy ….. Hidden Things
C. P. Cavafy ….. Kleithos’ Illness
C. P. Cavafy ….. The Next Table
C. P. Cavafy ….. On Board Ship
C. P. Cavafy ….. Two Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old
C. P. Cavafy ….. Unfaithfulness
C. P. Cavafy ….. A Young Poet in his Twenty-fourth Year
Billy Collins ….. Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House
Billy Collins ….. Putting Down the Cat
Billy Collins ….. Walking Across the Atlantic
John Robert Columbo ….. Levitations
John Robert Columbo ….. Rabbi Huna’s Cure for Fever
Clark Coolidge ….. Movies
Eskimo …. Language Event
Eskimo ….. Vision Event I and Vision Event II
Eskimo ….. the old man’s song, about his wife
Paavo Haavikko ….. “You don’t want what you desire, says the dream.”
Andrew J. Grossman ….. one haiku
Joe Nutt ….. one haiku
Cor van den Heuvel ….. one haiku
Emily Romano ….. one haiku
Wally Swist ….. one haiku
Onitsura ….. one haiku
Basho ….. one haiku
Masahide ….. one haiku
Robert Hass ….. My Mother’s Nipples
Anselm Hollo ….. big dog
Horace ….. Venus’ Chapel
Ibykos ….. On a Man-Made Peninsula in Syracuse
Chief Joseph ….. The Surrender Speech of Chief Joseph
Kim Ch’un-su ….. The Wall
Eila Kivikk’aho ….. Recollection
Ronald Koertge ….. Diary Cows
Gail Kuenstler ….. Stagecraft: the Machinery for the Paradise
Jorge de Lima ….. The Big Mystical Circus
Jorge de Lima ….. The Bird
John Lowry ….. Situation Normal
Eeva-Liisa Manner ….. “I thought it was a letter, thrown on the porch,”
Eeva-Liisa Manner ….. “If it’s true that when I go”
William Marsh ….. Cambodia
William Marsh ….. Vietnam
Cecilia Meireles ….. The Dead Horse
Joao Cabral de Melo Neto ….. A Knife All Blade
Cesar Moro ….. Vision of Moth-eaten Pianos Falling to Pieces
Peter Morris ….. Hawaiian Shirts
Peter Morris ….. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Peter Morris ….. Zero Motivation
Pablo Neruda ….. Lone Gentleman
Ezekial Nissim ….. Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.
Sharon Olds ….. First Sex
Sharon Olds ….. Ideographs
Maureen Owen ….. African Sunday
Pawnee ….. definition of the word: Risha
Ezra Pound ….. Papyrus
Miklos Radnoti ….. Autumn Begins Restlessly
Miklos Radnoti ….. parts II and IV from Postcards
A. K. Ramanujan ….. Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House
Rihaku / Li T’ai Po ….. Exile’s Letter
Pattiann Rogers ….. The Dead Never Fight Against Anything
Pattiann Rogers ….. How the Moon Becomes Itself
Pattiann Rogers ….. The Next Story
Pattiann Rogers ….. When You Watch Us Sleeping
Pentti Saarikoski ….. “Right till the last”
Pentti Saaritsa ….. “A sage old man”
Sherod Santos ….. The Evening Light Along the Sound
Sappho ….. Now I Begin
Sappho ….. Then
Sappho ….. “I said, Sappho”
Sappho ….. “You may forget but”
Sappho ….. “I thought the talented”
Sappho ….. “To an army wife, in Sardis”
Sappho ….. To Aphrodite
Sappho ….. “not even / lovely”
Sappho ….. “He seems to be a god, that man”
Sappho ….. “slick with slime”
Sappho ….. “their hearts grew chill”
Sappho ….. “it is not for me, it seems”
Sappho ….. “Love shakes my heart”
Sappho ….. two fragments
Sappho ….. “like the sweet apple”
Chief Seattle ….. “What happens to the beasts”
Semonides ….. Life and Death
Sin Tong-jip ….. Life
Gary Soto ….. In the Madness of Love
May Swenson ….. In Florida
Sara Teasdale ….. I Shall Not Care
Sara Teasdale ….. In a Restaurant
Julia Vinograd ….. Summer Murder
Caj Westerberg ….. “A dry alder leaf drifts”
Caj Westerberg ….. “I’m in a cafe”
Danielle Willis ….. The Awful Truth
from the Wintu ….. Dream Song
Xenophanes ….. The Making of Gods
Yi Un-sang ….. Songbul Temple
Rafael Zepeda ….. During Vietnam

These are the poems I hand copied in 1992. As always I read and reread each poem before deciding to commit myself not only to the effort of copying it out but to the years ahead of being faced with the choice (and I’ve lived long enough for that to be the case). By 1992 I’d settled into the project and no longer questioned it; it just seemed natural.

I raided the UC Berkeley library collection for their bound back issues of Wormwood Review, a digest-sized, saddle-stapled quarterly edited by Marvin Malone, which championed a plain-spoken, prosy poetry. I found many poems to like and copied out a few: Rafael Zepeda, Peter Morris, William Marsh, John Lowry, Ronald Baatz. I subscribed for a while and sent my own work to editor Malone. Malone made encouraging noises at first, then changed his mind. Most the haiku are from another magazine I’d subscribed to, Modern Haiku.