The Best American Poetry 2003, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Yusef Komunyakaa.
Ron Smith, reviewing the book in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, wrote that Galway Kinnell's When the Towers Fell is "often moving, even if it doesn't manage the fusion of Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot it aims for." Another poem in the volume focusing on the effects of terrorism is Susan Dickman's Skin. Smith thought the better poems in this edition were by Marilyn Nelson, Rodney Jones, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Tony Hoagland, and Ted Kooser. Smith, Ron, "Poets must meet exacting standards to be picked for Best of 2003", book review in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 4, 2004, accessed through Newsbank.com (subscription required) on October 13, 2007
Poets and poems included Poet Poem Publication(s) where poem previously appeared Jonathan Aaron "The End of Out of the Past" The London Review of Books Beth Anderson from "A Locked Room" Poetry Project Newsletter Nin Andrews "Dedicated to the One I Love" Gargoyle Wendell Berry "Some Further Words" American Poetry Review Frank Bidart "Curse" The Threepenny Review Diann Blakely "Rambling on My Mind" Bomb Bruce Bond "Art Tatum" The Paris Review Catherine Bowman from "1000 Lines" TriQuarterly Rosemary Catacalos "Perfect Attendance: Short Subjects Made from the Staring Photos of Strangers" The Progressive Joshua Clover "Aeon Flux:June" Ploughshares Billy Collins "Litany" Poetry Michael S. Collins "Six Sketches: When a Soul Breaks" Callaloo Carl Dennis "World History" Poetry Susan Dickman "Skin" Rhino Rita Dove "Fox Trot Fridays" Callaloo Stephen Dunn "Open Door Blues" Brilliant Corners Stuart Dybek "Journal" Tin House Charles Fort "The Vagrant Hours" Mississippi Review James Galvin "Ponderosa" Boston Review Amy Gerstler "An Offer Received in This Morning's Mail:" American Poetry Review Louise Glück "Landscape" The Threepenny Review Michael Goldman "Report on Human Beings" Ontario Review Ray Gonzalez "Max Jacob's Shoes" New American Writing Linda Gregg "Beauty" The New Yorker Mark Halliday "The Opaque" Colorado Review Michael S. Harper "Rhythmic Arrangements (on prosody)" LUNA Matthea Harvey "Sad Little Breathing Machine" Verse George V. Higgins "Villanelle" 88 Edward Hirsch "The Desire Manuscripts" The Paris Review Tony Hoagland "Summer Night" 88 Richard Howard "Success" The New Yorker Rodney Jones "Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical" Five Points Joy Katz "Some Rain" Pleiades Brigit Pegeen Kelly "The Dragon" New England ReviewGalway Kinnell "When the Towers Fell" The New Yorker Carolyn Kizer "After Horace" Poetry Jennifer L. Knox "Love Blooms at Chimsbury After the War" FIELD Kenneth Koch "Proverb" The New York Review of Books John Koethe "Y2K (1933)" Poetry Ted Kooser "In the Hall of Bones" Third Coast Philip Levine "The Music of Time" Rattle J. D. McClatchy "Jihad" Poetry W. S. Merwin "To Zbigniew Herbert's Bicycle" The New Yorker Stanley Moss "A History of Color" American Poetry Review Heather Moss "Dear Alter Ego" Croonenbergh's Fly Paul Muldoon "The Loaf" The New York Review of Books Peggy Munson "Four Deaths That Happened Daily" Spoon River Poetry Review Marilyn Nelson "Asparagus" Rattapallax Daniel Nester "Poem for the Novelist Whom I Forced to Write a Poem" Spinning Jenny Naomi Shihab Nye "What Happened to Everybody" LUNA Ishle Yi Park "Queen Min Bi" Barrow Street Robert Pinsky "Anniversary" The Washington Post Magazine Kevin Prufer "What the Paymaster Said" Witness Ed Roberson "Sequoia sempervirens" Callaloo Vijay Seshadri "The Disappearances" The New Yorker Myra Shapiro "For Nazim Hikmet in the Old Prison, Now a Four Seasons Hotel" Rattapallax Alan Shapiro "Sleet" Third Coast Bruce Smith "Song with a Child's Pacifier in It" Boston Review Charlie Smith "There's Trouble Everywhere" Poetry Maura Stanton "Translating" Mid-American Review Ruth Stone "Lines" PMS James Tate "The Restaurant Business" New American Writing William Tremblay "The Lost Boy" LUNA Natasha Trethewey "After Your Death" New England Review David Wagoner "On Being Asked to Discuss Poetic Theory" 88 Ronald Wallace "In a Rut" Poetry Northwest Lewis Warsh "Premonition" The World Susan Wheeler "In Sky" Boston Review Richard Wilbur "Man Running" The New Yorker C. K. Williams "The World" The New Yorker Terence Winch "My Work" New American Writing David Wojahn "Scrabble with Matthews" Poetry Robert Wrigley "Clemency" The Kenyon Review Anna Ziegler "After the Opening, 1932" The Threepenny Review Ahmos Zu-Bolton II "Reading the Bones: a Blackjack Moses nightmare" American Poetry Review
See also 2003 in poetry
Notes
External links Web page for contents of the book, with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared Review by Jordan Davis at The Constant Critic Web site