What Good Cooks Know

Introduction -- America -- On The Road: -- In a train / Robert Bly -- Locomotion / Philip Bryant -- Small towns are passing / Wesley McNair -- From a bus window in Central Ohio, just before a thunder shower / James Wright -- On the road, between Toledo & Cincinnati, late June / Sebastian Matthews -- Over Ohio / Michael Blumenthal -- Sacred / Stephen Dunn -- Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River / Robert Bly -- Campbellsburg / Reid Bush -- Homesteader / John Haag -- Moment / CG Hanzlicek -- Flying lesson / Julia Kasdorf -- Toward the Verrazano / Stephen Dunn -- Night journey / Theodore Roethke -- Folsom Prison blues / Johnny Cash -- Bums at breakfast / David Wagoner -- Cottonwoods / Phebe Hanson -- Driving through the Poconos, Route 80, 1:30 am, snow / William Matthews -- Driving at night / Sheila Packa -- Top down / Fred Weil Jr -- Fifteen / William Stafford -- Hard river / James Finnegan -- Driving west in 1970 / Robert Bly -- Mambo Cadillac / Barbara Hamby -- Warm Summer: -- On the back porch / Dorianne Laux -- Summer kitchen / Donald Hall -- Warm summer in San Francisco / Carolyn Miller -- Reverence / Julie Cadwallader-Staub -- Produce / Debra Allbery -- Insiders view of the garden / Maxine Kumin -- Tahoe in August / Robert Hass -- Summer in a small town / Linda Gregg -- Church of the backyard / Chris Forhan -- Girl Scout picnic, 1954 / June Beisch -- City of Tonawanda softball championship / Sarah Freligh -- Baseball / John Updike -- Ordinary / Kirsten Dierking -- Last things Ill remember / Joyce Sutphen -- Strange new cottage in Berkeley / Allen Ginsberg -- So this is Nebraska / Ted Kooser -- Place Where We Were Naked: -- Gradualism / Kenneth Rexroth -- Belle Isle, 1949 / Philip Levine -- Skinny-dipping after work at the drive-in / Debra Nystrom -- Jubilee / Gabrielle Calvocoressi -- Tennis ball / Donald Hall -- Manhattan / Edward Denham -- Last Gods / Galway Kinnell -- Breaking silence-for my son / Patricia Fargnoli -- Late / Jim Harrison -- City Life: -- New York notes / Harvey Shapiro -- Mannahatta / Walt Whitman -- New York / Edward Field -- Staying at Eds place / May Swenson -- My daughters in New York / James Reiss -- At the Algonquin / Howard Moss -- Last Bohemians / Edward Field -- At the museum of modern art / May Swenson -- Bridal shower / George Bilgere -- What the dark-eyed angel knows / Eleanor Lerman -- Riding the A / May Swenson -- Goodbye, New York / Deborah Garrison -- For Bartleby / Malena Morling -- Moondog / Susan Donnelly -- Home by now / Meg Kearney -- Black umbrellas / Rick Agran -- New lifestyle / James Tate -- Motor City tirade / Dawn McDuffie -- Beale Street blues / WC Handy -- Motown, arsenal of democracy / Marge Piercy -- Fishing on the Susquehanna in July / Billy Collins -- Pershing Square, Los Angeles, 1939 / Charles Bukowski -- L A / Terry Stevenson -- Interiors / Stephen Dunn -- Reading, PA / John Updike -- Elm City / Reed Whittemore -- Profile of the night heron / Annie Pierson Wiese -- Retired ballerinas, Central Park West / Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- Old neighbors / Katha Pollitt -- 2 X 2 X 2: -- Once I passd through a populous city / Walt Whitman -- Gate C22 / Ellen Bass -- Escape from Paradise, Iowa / Kathryn Kysar -- Every day, the pregnant teenagers / Cortney Davis -- Girl in Milwaukee and a girl in Brooklyn / Matt Cook -- Day I made my father proud / Michael Moran -- Spring rain / Kenneth Rexroth -- Sleeping next to the man on the plane / Ellen Bass -- Starfish / Eleanor Lerman -- Summer night, riverside / Sara Teasdale -- Wedding vow / Sharon Olds -- John Green takes his Warner, New Hampshire, neighbor to a Red Sox game / Maxine Kumin -- Mount Kearsarge shines / Donald Hall -- Arc / Amy M Clark -- Why I have a crush on you, UPS man / Alice N Persons -- My love for all things warm and breathing / William Kloefkorn -- San Antonio / Naomi Shihab Nye -- They sit together on the porch / Wendell Berry -- As toilsome I wanderd Virginias woods / Walt Whitman -- Only years / Kenneth Rexroth -- Comforting Immensity: -- Light by the barn / William Stafford -- One home / William Stafford -- To make a prairie / Emily Dickinson -- Silence in North Dakota / Bill Holm -- At the un-national monument along the Canadian border / William Stafford -- Farmhouses, Iowa / Baron Wormser -- Dishwater / Ted Kooser -- Some directions for the December touring of West-Central Nebraska / William Kloefkorn -- Tornado weather / Vincent Wixon -- Wife explains why she likes country / Barbara Ras -- Small excursion / Mona Van Duyn -- Midwest / Stephen Dunn -- In Texas / May Sarton -- Squatting / Robert Morgan -- Farley, Iowa / Christopher Wiseman -- From here to there / Brad Leithauser -- Crossing Kansas by train / Donald Justice -- Crossing Central Illinois / Alvin Greenberg -- Island cities / John Updike -- Home town / William Stafford -- Highway hypothesis / Maxine Kumin -- Flying at night / Ted Kooser -- Sort Of Rapture: -- Above Pate Valley / Gary Snyder -- V / Wendell Berry -- Word (The) / Maxine Kumin -- Evening is tranquil, and dawn is a thousand miles away / Charles Wright -- Riding out at evening / Linda McCarriston -- Winter: tonight: sunset / David Budbill -- In the bus / Grace Paley -- Critic / CK Williams -- Late Spring / Jim Harrison -- Things I know, things I dont / David Huddle -- VCCA fellows visit the Holiness Baptist Church, Amherst, Virginia / Barbara Crooker -- Resort, part IX / Patricia Hampl -- Game (The) / Marie Howe -- Burning the ditches / Jim Harrison -- For all / Gary Snyder -- Thoreau and the toads / David Wagoner -- Bridge (The) / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Autumn waiting / Tom Hennen -- This morning / Raymond Carver --;On The Avenue: -- 20 / Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- Shopping / Faith Shearin -- Eddie Priests barbershop & notary / Kevin Young -- Un Bel Di / Gerald Locklin -- Beans and franks / Donald Hall -- At the town dump / Jane Kenyon -- Elopement / Sharon Olds -- I ride Greyhound / Ellie Schoenfeld -- Coffee cup cafe / Linda M Hasselstrom -- Ineffable (The) / George Bilgere -- People who eat in coffee shops / Edward Field -- Ode to hardware stores / Barbara Hamby -- I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ / Walt Whitman -- On the day of Jayne Mansfields death / Nancy Vieira Couto -- To Mecca with love / James Tracy -- Minor league rainout, Iowa / Mark J Mitchell -- Court of the two sisters / Phillip Lopate -- I went into the Maverick Bar / Gary Snyder -- American triptych / Jane Kenyon -- Snow: -- Snow: I / CK Williams -- Bright sun after heavy snow / Jane Kenyon -- Snowbound city (The) / John Haines -- Snow, aldo / Kate DiCamillo -- Winter afternoon / Grace Paley -- Legend / Garrett Hongo -- Snowbound / David Tucker -- Manna / Joseph Stroud -- Outside of Richmond, Virginia, Sunday / Deborah Slicer -- Snowstorm (The) / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Pair of barn owls, hunting (A) / David Wagoner -- When I first saw snow / Gregory Djanikian -- Snow / Kenneth Rexroth -- I want to say / Natalie Goldberg -- Upon discovering my entire solution / Dobby Gibson -- Snow / Debra Nystrom -- Snow-flakes / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Residential: -- Where I live / Maxine Kumin -- Fields / Faith Shearin -- Monticello / May Sarton -- Inheritance / WS Merwin -- Unfortunate location / Louis Jenkins -- Sunday dinner / Dan Masterson -- Eight-doing the dishes / Jeanne Lohmann -- Porches II / Virginia Hamilton Adair -- Fat of the land / Ronald Wallace -- Plastic beatitude / Laure-Anne Bosselaar -- Brothers and sisters / Jim Harrison -- 227 Waverly Place / WS Merwin -- To his piano / Howard Nemerov -- Letter home / Ellen Steinbaum -- Crickets in the dark / Tom Hennen -- 25th high school reunion / Linda Pastan -- Good Work: -- Zen of mucking out / Maxine Kumin -- H / Joyce Sutphen -- After work / Gary Snyder -- Notes from the delivery room / Linda Pastan -- Complaint / William Carlos Williams -- Big wind / Theodore Roethke -- People who take care / Nancy Henry -- Only what I can do / Julene Tripp Weaver -- Wild geese / Charles Goodrich -- One for my dame / Anne Sexton -- Driving nails / Gary L Lark -- Men throwing bricks / Michael Chitwood -- Traffic / Donald Hall -- Small pleasures / Greg Pape -- Feeding time / Maxine Kumin -- Butchering the crippled heifer / Linda M Hasselstrom -- Meat / August Kleinzahler -- Bad old days (The) / Kenneth Rexroth -- Out West: -- Home on the range (A) / Anonymous -- Accountability / William Stafford -- Alien / Jim Harrison -- Walk (A) / Gary Snyder -- Missoula in a dusty light / John Haines -- Bronco busting, event #1 / May Swenson -- Saturday matinee (The) / Jon Bowerman -- Morning news in the Bighorn Mountains / William Notter -- Boulder dam / May Sarton -- Two girls / Jim Harrison -- Trestle / Raymond Carver -- Show Business: -- Piano dreams / Marcia F Brown -- Late wonders / WS Merwin -- In Chandler country / Dana Gioia -- Nancy Drew / Ron Koertge -- Studs Terkel / Gary Johnson -- Live at the Village Vanguard / Sebastian Matthews -- Minor Seventh / Jeffrey Bean -- Kryptonite / Ron Koertge -- My father laughing in the Chicago theater / David Wagoner -- Ballet blanc / Katha Pollitt -- Skokie theatre (The) / Edward Hirsch -- Junior high school band concert (The) / David Wagoner -- Dance suite: hip hop / WD Snodgrass -- Movie-going / John Hollander -- Ocean Brine: -- This night only / Kenneth Rexroth -- Cape Cod / George Santayana -- San Francisco remembered / Philip Schultz -- Place for no story (The) / Robinson Jeffers -- Large starfish (The) / Robert Bly -- Looking west from Laguna Beach at night / Charles Wright -- By the Pacific / Jessica Joyce -- Long Island sound / Emma Lazarus -- Carmel point / Robinson Jeffers -- Florida beach (The) / Constance Fenimore Woolson -- Never Expected To Be There: -- Driving with Uncle Bailey / David Lee Garrison -- Execution / Edward Hirsch -- Wagons / Maxine Kumin -- Meadowbrook Nursing Home / Alice N Persons -- Spring and all 1923 / William Carlos Williams -- At Summerfords Nursing Home / Rodney Jones -- Earl / Louis Jenkins -- His stillness / Sharon Olds -- Still life in landscape / Sharon Olds -- Slave auction (The) / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper -- Theres been a death, in the opposite house / Emily Dickinson -- Hookers, the madmen and the doomed (The) / Charles Bukowski -- Edward C Peterson tree (The) / Charlie Langdon -- Safe in their alabaster chambers / Emily Dickinson -- Grandmas grave / Freya Manfred -- It was a normal day except I fell / Julie Sheehan -- Sweet Annie Divine / Corey Mesler -- Dedication for a plot of ground / William Carlos Williams -- On the road to Woodlawn / Theodore Roethke -- Biographies -- Author index -- Title index.;Overview: Another wonderful poetry anthology from Garrison Keillor-rooted in the American landscape. Greatness comes in many forms, and as Garrison Keillor demonstrates daily on The Writers Almanac, the most affecting poems in the canon are in plain English. Third in Keillors series of anthologies, Good Poems, American Places brings together poems that celebrate the geography and culture that bind us together as a nation. Think of these poems as postcards from the road, by poets whove gotten carried away by a particular place-a town in Kansas, a kitchen window in Nantucket, a Manhattan street, a farm in western Minnesota. Featuring famous poets and brash unknowns alike, the verses in this exhilarating collection prove that the heart can be exalted anywhere in America.