Ann Keniston - The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-0055-0

2012 Ann Keniston and Jeffrey Gray. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: The exterior support columns from the lower level of the south tower of the World Trade Center after the September 11 attack (FEMA photographer Bri Rodriguez)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

For our children
Paul and Jeremy Novak
and
Pablo and Maira Duarte Quiroga

We wish to acknowledge the generous support of the Scholarly and Creative Activities Grants Program of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the English Department at Seton Hall University.

We are grateful to the research assistants who helped us locate poems, obtain permissions, track down poets, and assemble and proofread the manuscript. At the University of Nevada, Reno, Sarah Stewart helped locate poems; Brian Baaki extended this research and obtained relevant anthologies; special thanks are due to S. Laurel Griffiths, who painstakingly checked and assembled the typescript and to editorial assistant Eric Stottlemyer, who researched and obtained many of the permissions. At Seton Hall University, we wish to thank Dejon Turner and especially Valerie Falk, who, in addition to numerous organizational labors, helped assemble the manuscript, proofread it, and created the index.

We also wish to thank the publishers who granted us permission to reprint these poems, virtually all at drastically reduced fees or gratis. This book would not be possible without their generosity and support.

Our greatest debt is to the poets whose work we include. We are grateful for their poems and for their generosity in allowing us to reprint them, and also for their prose statements, which together offer what may be the first comprehensive account of the state of U.S. poetics of the early 21st century.

We here acknowledge the following publishers, which have allowed us to reprint previously published poems.

Rae Armantrout, New, Previews, Bubble Wrap from Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). 2009 by Rae Armantrout and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. Action Poem appeared in Shampoo. Used by permission of the author.

Frank Bidart, To the Republic from Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart. Copyright 2008 by Frank Bidart. Curse and The Soldier Who Guards the Frontier from Star Dust by Frank Bidart. Copyright 2005 by Frank Bidart. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Inauguration Day appeared in Slate. Used by permission of the author.

Robert Bly, Call and Answer from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy by Robert Bly. Copyright 2005 by Robert Bly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Let Sympathy Pass, The Stew of Discontents, Those Being Eaten, and Here the Sleepers Sleep from The Insanity of Empire: A Book of Poems Against the Iraq War by Robert Bly. Copyright 2004. Used by permission of Robert Bly and Ally Press.

Bruce Bond, The Altars of September from Cinder. Copyright 2003 by Bruce Bond. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Etruscan Press, www.etruscanpress.org. Bruce Bond, Ringtone from PEAL. Copyright 2009 by Bruce Bond. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Etruscan Press, www.etruscanpress.org. Flag from Blind Rain. Copyright 2008 by Bruce Bond. Reprinted with the permission of Louisiana State University Press and the author.

Joel Brouwer, Lines from the Reports of the Investigative Committees appeared in Poetry. Used by permission of the author.

Timothy Donnelly, Partial Inventory of Airborne Debris and Dream of Arabian Hillbillies from The Cloud Corporation. Copyright 2010. Reprinted with the permission of Wave Books and the author.

Katie Ford, Flee, Earth, The Vessel Bends the Water and Fish Market from Colosseum. Copyright 2008 by Katie Ford. Reprinted with permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Forrest Gander, Background Check appeared in La Siega Revista online journal. Used by permission of the author.

Peter Gizzi, Protest Song from The Outernationale (Wesleyan University Press, 2007). 2007 by Peter Gizzi and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Louise Glck, October from Averno by Louise Glck. Copyright 2006 by Louise Glck. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Copyright 2004, 2006 by Louise Glck, reprinted in the UK by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Albert Goldbarth, Some Common Terms in Latin That Are Larger Than Our Lives appeared in Poetry. Used by permission of the author.

Kenneth Goldsmith, excerpt from The Day, which appeared as The Day from Figures Books. Copyright 2003 by Kenneth Goldsmith. Used by permission of the author and Figures Books.

Jorie Graham, Praying (Attempt of June 14 03), Little Exercise from Overlord by Jorie Graham. Copyright 2005 by Jorie Graham. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Guantnamo from Sea Change by Jorie Graham. Copyright 2008 by Jorie Graham. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Employment first appeared in the London Review of Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Linda Gregerson, Sweet and Father Mercy, Mother Tongue from Magnetic North: Poems by Linda Gregerson. Copyright 2007 by Linda Gregerson. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. The Selvage first appeared in Poetry and Still Life first appeared in The New Yorker. Both used by permission of the author.

Eamon Grennan, Y2K from Out of Sight: New and Collected Poems. Copyright 2010 by Eamon Grennan. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Marilyn Hacker, Ghazal: min al-hobbi ma qatal, Names, Letter to Hayden Carruth, from Names: Poems by Marilyn Hacker. Copyright 2010 by Marilyn Hacker. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Forrest Hamer, Aftermath, What Happened, Conference from Rift 2007 by Forrest Hamer. Reprinted with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.

Robert Hass, three poems (I am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name is Dmitri, Ezra Pounds Proposition, On Visiting the DMZ at Panmunjom: A Haibun) from Time and Materials: Poems 19972005 by Robert Hass. Copyright 2007 by Robert Hass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Some of Davids Story from The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass. Copyright 2010 by Robert Hass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.