In the tradition of such classics as Paul Carroll's 1968 The Young American Poets and the 1985 The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets edited by Dave Smith and David Bottoms, this comprehensive, groundbreaking anthology offers a broad and representative introduction to some of the most exciting, fresh, ambitious, and original new voices on the contemporary poetry landscape by gathering together generous selections from the work of eighty–five younger American poets. The poets in this book were born after 1960, published their first book within the last ten years, and have no more than three books published. Some are already the heralded recipients of numerous prizes and awards, while others, who are making their first appearance in a poetry anthology, are quickly beginning to make significant contributions to the poetry of the twenty–first century. While these poets are extraordinarily diverse in their aesthetic sensibilities and approaches to craft, they are all distinguished by their inimitable voices, their virtuosity, their willingness to take meaningful risks in terms of form and content, an intellectual depth, an emotional honesty, and an ability to take the reader's breath away.

The poets in this volume include:

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Rick Barot	Dan Beachy-Quick	Joshua Beckman
Joshua Bell	David Berman	Erica Bernheim
Mark Bibbins	Sherwin Bitsui	Richard Blanco
Joel Brouwer	Oni Buchanan	Julianne Buchsbaum
Stephen Burt	Dan Chiasson	Carrie St. George Comer
Olena Kalytiak Davis	Monica de la Torre	Timothy Donnelly
Ben Doyle	Thomas Sayers Ellis	Andrew Feld
Monica Ferrell	Miranda Field	Nick Flynn
Katie Ford	Arielle Greenberg	Jennifer Grotz
Matthea Harvey	Terrance Hayes	Steve Healey
Thomas Heise	Brian Henry	Christine Hume
Major Jackson	Lisa Jarnot	A. Van Jordan
Ilya Kaminsky	Sally Keith	Suji Kwock Kim
James Kimbrell	Joanna Klink	Noelle Kocot
Katy Lederer	Dana Levin	Maurice Manning
Sabrina Orah Mark	Corey Marks	Khaled Mattawa
Jeffrey McDaniel	Joyelle McSweeney	Sarah Messer
Ethan Paquin	Alan Michael Parker	D. A. Powell
Kevin Prufer	Srikanth Reddy	Spencer Reece
Paisley Rekdal	Matthew Rohrer	Tessa Rumsey
Robyn Schiff	Patty Seyburn	Brenda Shaughnessy
Richard Siken	Tracy K. Smith	Julianna Spahr
Larissa Szporluk	Brian Teare	Ann Townsend
Natasha Trethewey	Pimone Triplett	Karen Volkman
G.C. Waldrep	Joe Wenderoth	Greg Williamson
Emily Wilson	Suzanne Wise	Rebecca Wolff
Mark Wunderlich	Monica Youn	C. Dale Young
Kevin Young	Matthew Zapruder	Andrew Zawacki
Rachel Zucker

Read

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Many Are Called
by Rick Barot

to burn at least one thing they once owned: she tears
the page from his book and sets light to whatever
she said to him there, words to smoke, paper

to black snow. She would like a sleep as big as
a building, whose key she firmly keeps in her hand,
its teeth writing into her palm. Be as nothing

in the floods, I read yesterday on the bus home,
which was a way of saying that in the dimmed glass
all of us and none of us could be found. But one

face was like sun reflecting on ice, lit by what
the Walkman poured into it, its champagnes. One
made me think of the mushroom in the woods

like a face pressed to a photocopier's flash,
the face and its goofy pain. Many are called to save
what they can: he rolls up his pants and wades

into the fountain, where the gull has its leg caught
on a wire. The bird flaps away to join the wheeling
others, their strokes on the air like diacritical

marks over the sentences uttered below them.
A friend writes about how cold he had been, nearly
drowned in the spring-melt river when the horse

tipped over. It is months away now, but still
I have him there, in the darkening field, the fireflies
a roused screensaver. Many are called to close

upon themselves like circles: Kafka, waking because
a dog is lying on him. He doesn't open his eyes
but he can feel its weight, its paw smelling

faintly of hay. Or the woman crying in the park,
her shopping cart tumbled, shoes and cans spilled out
like junk from a shark's stomach. Or the man

walking home along the houses and the lawns
of his sadness: If there must be a god in the house...
Under the new trees and the new moon of his sadness:

He must dwell quietly. Many are called to form
a deity out of what they know: he quizzes me
on the capital of every African country, he paints

his toenails silver because I ask him. A friend writes
about the church where a fresco will always show
them: cleanly naked at first, then full of the blame

of their own guile, then clothed, worried with age,
the woman in her room setting fire to something
she had, the man in the meadow, wishing his rib back.

I Love How Your Eyes Close Every Time You Kiss Me

a line from a song by Bobby Vinton

by Erica Bernheim

You are alone and you are easy. You see
the history of your life and lineage in your
mitochondrial genes, cells, confirming what
we suspected: bottleneck, enlargement, plague,
vulcanologists from everywhere, studying the
site, thinking aren't you a cute disease. The
music is so loud you blink every time there is
a drum. Yes, best we heirloom quietly, for we
are powerful weak. Overcoat, spread your wings.
Almost a legend, knots laced with passed-over
glass, daddies in pastel suits next to the only
surviving witness from a life best spent in big years,
dreaming of sliding on your belly. Tough night,
wet ink, loose seams. There is plenty of time for
nothing and you should volunteer for it. Time allotted
is never enough. Roll over and tell me you're a
sofa, backboned by an old quilt, tied to the notion
of design, of pattern, of words so staccato they bang
like rats atop the roofs of government embassies,
that is, without regard for what those below will
try to assume you are: harmless and preoccupied,
known through your gestures to be true.
The ropey cuisine of another planet awaits you
tonight, something freeze-dried and wet
just for you, and molded into whatever you
want: lids and caps, some beans or rice, coelacanth,
but the remains will leave their fossils
on your plate. Memory is like this, patterns
already laid out across neurons and blisters,
each occasion which follows will fit
into that shape, even sans arms or eyelashes,
rendered sharp-tongued with bad desire.

The Elephant
by Dan Chiasson

How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel
that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.

I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion,
\t once I was not the elephant I find I am.

My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched
\t trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was

somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness
\t and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me

to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it
\t in the lumbering tercets, but to my mind
I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man
\t of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers

breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments
\t with balance, the high-wire act and cones.

We elephants are images of humility, as when we
\t undertake our melancholy migrations to die.

Did you know, though, that elephants were taught
\t to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves?

Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs,
\t tossing grass up to heaven--as a distraction, not a prayer.

That's not humility you see, on our long final journeys:
\t it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.

Sweet Reader, Flanneled and Tulled
by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Reader unmov'd and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc'd
and unterrified, through the long–loud and sweet–still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.

I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank
season, counting-I sleep and I sleep. I sleep,
Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf

as a leaf. Reader: Why don't you turn
pale? and, Why don't you tremble? Jaded, staid
Reader, You-who can read this and not even

flinch. Bare–faced, flint–hearted, recoilless
Reader, dare you-Rare Reader, listen
and be convinced: Soon, Reader,

soon you will leave me, for an italian mistress:
for her dark hair, and her moon–lit
teeth. For her leopardi and her cavalcanti,

for her lips and clavicles; for what you want
to eat, eat, eat. Art–lover, rector, docent!
Do I smile? I, too, once had a brash artless

feeder: his eye set firm on my slackening
sky. He was true! He was thief! In the celestial sense
he provided some, some, some

(much-needed) relief. Reader much–slept with, and Reader I will die
without touching, You, Reader, You: mr. small–
weed, mr. broad–cloth, mr. long–dark–day. And the italian mis–

fortune you will heave me for, for
her dark hair and her moonlit–teeth. You will love her well in–
to three–or–four cities, and then, you will slowly

sink. Reader, I will never forgive you, but not, poor
cock-sure Reader, not, for what you think. O, Reader
Sweet! And Reader Strange! Reader Deaf and Reader

Dear, I understand youyourself may be hard–
pressed to bare this small and un–necessary burden
having only just recently gotten over the clean clean heart–

break of spring. And I, Reader, I am but the daughter
of a tinker. I am not above the use of bucktail spinners,
white grubs, minnow tails. Reader, worms

and sinkers. Thisandthese curtail me
to be brief: Reader, our sex gone
to wildweather. YesReaderYes-that feels much–much

better (And my new Reader will come to me empty–
handed, with a countenance that roses, lavenders, and cakes.
And my new Reader will be only mildly disappointed.

My new Reader can wait, can wait, can wait.) Light–
minded, snow-blind, nervous, Reader, Reader, troubled, Reader,
what'd ye lack? Importunate, unfortunate, Reader:

You are cold. You are sick. You are silly.
Forgive me, kind Reader, forgive me, I had not intended to step this quickly this far
back. Reader, we had a quiet wedding: he&I theparson

&theclerk. Would I could, stead-fast, gracilefacile Reader! Last,
good Reader, tarry with me, jessa-mine Reader. Dar–
(jee)ling, bide! Bide, Reader, tired, and stay, stay, stray Reader,

true. R.: I had been secretly hoping this would turn into a love
poem. Disconsolate. Illiterate. Reader,
I have cleared this space for you, for you, for you.

Boot Theory
by Richard Siken

A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife--please.
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t So you do.
\t You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her
\t\t\t\t\t and she leaves you and you're desolate.
You're on your back in your undershirt, a broken man
\t\t on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t on the ceiling.
\t And you can hear the man in the apartment above you
\t\t\t\t taking off his shoes.
You hear the first boot hit the floor and you're looking up,
\t\t\t\t\t\t you're waiting
\t because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be
\t\t some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together
\t but here we are in the weeds again,
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t here we are
in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.
\t\t And then the second boot falls.
\t\t\t\t\t And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.

\t A man walks into a bar and says:
\t\t\t\t Take my wife--please.
\t\t\t But you take him instead.
You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich,
\t and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t and he keeps kicking you.
\t You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don't work.
\t\t Boots continue to fall to the floor
\t\t\t\t\t\t in the apartment above you.
You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
\t Your co-workers ask
\t\t\t if everything's okay and you tell them
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t you're just tired.
\t And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.

A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
\t\t\t Make it a double.
\t A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Walk a mile in my shoes.
A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying:
\t\t I only wanted something simple, something generic...
\t But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.
A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
\t but then he's still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
\t\t\t\t but then he's still left with his hands.


Duende
by Tracy K. Smith

1.
The earth is dry and they live wanting.
Each with a small reservoir
Of furious music heavy in the throat.
They drag it out and with nails in their feet
Coax the night into being. Brief believing.
A skirt shimmering with sequins and lies.
And in this night that is not night,
Each word is a wish, each phrase
A shape their bodies ache to fill--

\t\t I'm going to braid my hair
\t Braid many colors into my hair
\t\t I'll put a long braid in my hair
\t And write your name there

They defy gravity to feel tugged back.
The clatter, the mad slap of landing.


2.
And not just them. Not just
The ramshackle family, the tios,
Primitos, not just the bailaor
Whose heels have notched
And hammered time
So the hours flow in place
Like a tin river, marking
Only what once was.
Not just the voices scraping
Against the river, nor the hands
nudging them farther, fingers
like blind birds, palms empty,
echoing. Not just the women
with sober faces and flowers
in their hair, the ones who dance
as though they're burying
memory--one last time--
beneath them.
\t\t And I hate to do it here.
To set myself heavily beside them.
Not now that they've proven
The body a myth, parable
For what not even language
Moves quickly enough to name.
If I call it pain, and try to touch it
With my hands, my own life,
It lies still and the music thins,
A pulse felt for through garments.
If I lean into the desire it starts from--
If I lean unbuttoned into the blow
Of loss after loss, love tossed
Into the ecstatic void--
It carries me with it farther,
To chords that stretch and bend
Like light through colored glass.
But it races on, toward shadows
Where the world I know
And the world I fear
Threaten to meet.


3.
There is always a road,
The sea, dark hair, dolor.

Always a question
Bigger than itself--

\t They say you're leaving Monday
\t Why can't you leave on Tuesday?

Blurbs

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Definitive, broadly representative anthology of poets born after 1960.

Winner of the 2006 American Poetry Anthology Award

"Here are the opening salvos and refusals, the forms and fragments-the combustible texts-of a talented new generation. Legitimate Dangers is rich and varied, decisive, wide–ranging, and unexpected. It is explosive."

-Edward Hirsch

"Legitimate Dangers is a brilliant record of what is genius in contemporary American poetry. It reflects the questions, and modes of questioning that shape our present aesthetic values. What we have here are the terms and the direction of our future salvation."

-Claudia Rankine

Winner of the 2006 American Poetry Anthology Award

View Cate & Michael's blog at the Poetry Foundation Website.

"Here are the opening salvos and refusals, the forms and fragments-the combustible texts-of a talented new generation. Legitimate Dangers is rich and varied, decisive, wide–ranging, and unexpected. It is explosive."

-Edward Hirsch

"Legitimate Dangers is a brilliant record of what is genius in contemporary American poetry. It reflects the questions, and modes of questioning that shape our present aesthetic values. What we have here are the terms and the direction of our future salvation."

-Claudia Rankine

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