The Best American Poetry 1992, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Charles Simic.
In the Forward, Lehman writes, "No critic will ever have the effect on our poets than certain of their grade school teachers had — the ones often credited by the poets themselves for their lifelong devotion to the art."Lehman, David, Forward, The Best American Poetry 1992, 1992, page xi
Lehman's forward also mentioned various public comments about the nation's lack of interest in poetry and questions about its future.
Poets and poems included Poet Poem Where poem previously appeared Jonathan Aaron "Dance Mania" The Paris Review Agha Shahid Ali "I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror" Field John Ash "The Ungrateful Citizens" The Paris Review John Ashbery "Poem at the New Year" The New Yorker Robin Behn "Midwestern Villanelle" Iowa Review Charles Bernstein "How I Painted Certain of My Pictures" Hambone George Bilgere "Healing" Iowa Review Elizabeth Bishop "Dear, My Compass..." The New Yorker Robert Bly "The Crippled Godwit" Ploughshares Lucie Brock-Broido "Inevitably, She Declined" Michigan Quarterly Review Joseph Brodsky "Homage to Gerolamo Marcello" The New Yorker Hayden Carruth "Sex" The Sewanee Review Billy Collins "Nostalgia" The Georgia Review Robert Creeley "Other" Grand Street Kathleen de Azevedo "Famous Women--Claudette Colbert" Fine Madness Carl Dennis "Spring Letter" Poetry Deborah Digges "My Amaryllis" Ploughshares Stephen Dunn "Smiles" Iowa Review Susan Firer "The Bright Waterfall of Angels" Iowa Review Alice Fulton "A Little Heart-to-Heart with the Horizon" Ploughshares Tess Gallagher "We're All Pharaohs When We Die" The Paris Review Amy Gerstler "On Wanting to Grow Horns" Witness Jack Gilbert "Voices Inside and Out" Ploughshares Louise Glück "Vespers" The New Yorker Jill Gonet "Body Will" ZYZZYVA Jorie Graham "Manifest Destiny" Michigan Quarterly Review Allen Grossman "Poland of Death (IV)" Tikkun Marilyn Hacker "Elysian Fields" The Paris Review Donald Hall "Spring Glen Grammar School" The New Yorker Daniel Halpern "Infidelities" The Paris Review Robert Hass "My Mother's Nipples" Michigan Quarterly Review Vickie Hearne "St. Luke Painting the Virgin" Raritan Juan Felipe Herrera "Iowa Blues Bar Spiritual" New England Review Edward Hirsch "Man on a Fire Escape" The New Yorker Daniel Hoffman "Identities" Boulevard John Hollander "Days of Autumn" Grand Street Richard Howard "Like Most Revelations" Boston Phoenix Lynda Hull "Lost Fugue for Chet" The Kenyon Review Lawrence Joseph "Some Sort of Chronicler I Am" The Kenyon Review Galway Kinnell "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" The Ohio Review Carolyn Kizer "Twelve O'clock" The Paris Review Phyllis Koestenbaum "Admission of Failure" Epoch Sharon Krinsky "Mystery Stories" Brooklyn Review Maxine Kumin "Saga: Four Variations on the Sonnet" Ploughshares Evelyn Lao "Green" Michigan Quarterly Review Li-Young Lee "This Hour and What Is Dead" Ploughshares Dionisio D. Martínez "Across These Landscapes of Early Darkness" Iowa Review Mekeel McBride "All Hallows' Eve" North American Review James McCorkle "" . . .The Storm is Passing Over"; She Sang" Verse Jerry McGuire "Terminal" Callaloo Sandra McPherson "Choosing an Author for Assurance in the Night" Field Robert Morgan "Honey" The Atlantic Monthly Thylias Moss "An Anointing" Epoch Carol Muske "Red Trousseau" American Poetry Review Mary Oliver "Rain" Poetry Michael Palmer "Eighth Sky" Grand Street Robert Pinsky "Avenue" Boston Phoenix Lawrence Raab "The Sudden Appearance of a Monster at a Window" Denver Quarterly Liam Rector "The Night the Lightning Bugs Lit Last in the Field Then Went Their Way" AGNI Donald Revell "Plenitude" New Letters Adrienne Rich "For a Friend in Travail" Poetry Len Roberts "We Sat, So Patient" Boulevard Lynda Schraufnagel "Trial" Western Humanities Review Elizabeth Spires "Good Friday. Driving Westward." The New Criterion Rachel Srubas "I Want to Marry You" Another Chicago Magazine David St. John "Lucifer in Starlight" Denver Quarterly Richard Tillinghast "Anatolian Journey" The New Yorker Lewis Turco "Kamelopard" The Formalist Chase Twichell "Word Silence" The Yale Review Rosanna Warren "Necrophiliac" The Atlantic Monthly Ioanna-Veronika Warwick "Eyeglasses" Exquisite Corpse C. K. Williams "The Knot" Antaeus Charles Wright "Winter-Worship" Field Franz Wright "Depiction of Childhood" Field Stephen Yenser "Vertumnal" The Yale Review
Publications most frequently represented In order of frequency, these are the publications most represented this year:
The New Yorker 7Paris Review 6Ploughshares 6The Iowa Review 5Field 4Michigan Quarterly Review 4The Atlantic Monthly 2Boulevard 2Denver Quarterly 2Grand Street 2The Kenyon Review 2Poetry 2The Yale Review 2
See also 1992 in poetry
Notes
External links Web page for contents of the book, with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared