The Best American poetry, 2001 / Robert Hass, editor ; David Lehman, series editor.

Foreword / David Lehman -- Introduction / Robert Hass -- Notes for a sermon on the mount / Nin Andrews -- The plan / Rae Armantrout -- Crossroads in the past / John Ashbery -- Jazz / Angela Ball -- Crossed-over, fiend-snitched, x-ed out / Mary Jo Bang -- When the gods put on meter / Cal Bedient -- Vague poem / Elizabeth Bishop -- The French generals / Robert Bly -- Sonnet around Stephanie / Lee Ann Brown -- Notes about my face / Michael Burkard -- Heartland / Trent Busch -- Blouse of felt / Amina Calil -- Longing, a documentary / Anne Carson -- Ceriserie / Joshua Clover -- Snow day / Billy Collins -- En Famille / Robert Creeley -- A mown lawn / Lydia Davis -- Ma Ramon / R. Erica Doyle -- The cloud of unknowing / Christopher Edgar -- T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. / Thomas Sayers Ellis -- The art of the snake story / Amy England -- Contemporary American poetry / Alan Feldman -- Little Dantesque / James Galvin -- Time / Louise Gluck -- My Chakabuku Mama: a comic tale / Jewelle Gomez -- Gulls / Jorie Graham -- Waterborne / Linda Gregerson -- The singers change, the music goes on / Linda Gregg -- Enough rain for Agnes Walquist / Allen Grossman -- Her garden / Donald Hall -- Sarabande on attaining the age of seventy-seven / Anthony Hecht -- Nights / Lyn Hejinian -- The formation of soils / Brenda Hillman -- In praise of coldness / Jane Hirshfield -- What the lovers in the old songs thought / John Hollander -- After 65 / Richard Howard -- Doubt / Fanny Howe --

Sweet reader, flanneled and tulled / Olena Kalytiak Davis -- The emperor of China / Shirley Kaufman -- The quick and the dead / Galway Kinnell -- Dear Derrida / David Kirby -- The ashes / Carolyn Kizer -- To World War Two / Kenneth Koch -- Consolations before an affair, Upper West Side / Noelle Kocot -- Songs of the valley / John Koethe -- Seven deadly sins / Yusef Komunyakaa -- Wedding day / Mark Levine -- The rider / Sarah Manguso -- Tattoos / J.D. McClatchy -- Mae West chats it up with Bessie Smith / Colleen J. McElroy -- My one / Heather McHugh -- Music for homemade instruments / Harryette Mullen -- Our kitty / Carol Muske Dukes -- Where leftover misery goes / Alice Notley -- His costume / Sharon Olds -- The nature of things / Kathleen Ossip -- Here / Grace Paley -- Untitled (February 2000) / Michael Palmer -- A metal denser than, and liquid / John Peck -- The ghost shirt / Lucia Perillo -- The clearing / Carl Phillips -- Jersey rain / Robert Pinsky -- A short narrative of breast and womb in service of plot entitled / Claudia Rankine -- Architect / Adrienne Rich -- Vectors: forty-five aphorisms and ten-second essays / James Richardson -- What we heard about the Japanese, and What the Japanese perhaps heard / Rachel Rose -- Furtherness / Mary Ruefle -- Along overgrown paths / James Schuyler -- Night picnic / Charles Simic -- Apple / Susan Steward -- Meteor / Larissa Szporluk -- The diagnosis / James Tate -- I stopped writing poetry / Bernard Welt -- Sources of the Delaware / Dean Young -- In your version of heaven I am younger / Rachel Zucker.