The Best American Poetry 2011

Rally / Elizabeth Alexander

Valediction / Sherman Alexie

Soft money / Rae Armantrout

Postlude and prequel / John Ashbery

To my lover, concerning the yird-swine / Julianna Baggott

When at a certain party in NYC / Erin Belieu

Banking / Cara Benson

Mine is the first rodeo, mine is the last accolade / Jaswinder Bolina

The Sink / Catherine Bowman

Off the Nollendorfplatz / Turner Cassity

Dead ass / Michael Cirelli

Here and there / Billy Collins

Three sonnets [Sonnet (division), Sonnet (motion), Sonnet (silenced)] / Olena Kalytiak Davis

Coffee / Matthew Dickman

From the lives of my friends / Michael Dickman

My strip club / Denise Duhamel

Emmett Till's glass-top casket / Cornelius Eady

Stays / Jill Alexander Essbaum

In November / Alan Feldman

The Amy poems ("Amy survives another apocalypse" and "You're really starting to suck, Amy") / Farrah Field

Morning on the island / Carolyn Forché

Everything is nervous / Beckian Fritz Goldberg

The space traveler talks frankly about desire / Benjamin S. Grossberg

Poppies / Jennifer Grotz

August notebook : a death / Robert Hass

Lighthead's guide to the galaxy / Terrance Hayes

Just as, after a point, Job cried out / K.A. Hays

Having intended to merely pick on an oil company, the poem goes awry / Bob Hicok

The cloudy vase / Jane Hirshfield

God's promises / Paul Hoover

The Funeral sermon / Andrew Hudgins

From Holding company ("Bereft", "Lying", "The Giant swing ending in a split," " Narcissus") / Major Jackson

Notebooks / Allison Joseph

Andrew Wyeth, painter, dies at 91 / L. S. Klatt

Kiri Te Kanawa singing "O Mio Babbino Caro" / Jennifer Knox

A Voice on an answering machine / Yusef Komunyakaa

Snow / James Longenbach

The Pilgrim is bridled and bespectacled / Bridget Lowe

The Complaint against Roney Laswell's rooster / Maurice Manning

Pears / Morton Marcus

Dear gaybashers / Jill McDonough

Elegy with construction sounds, water, fish / Erika Meitner

The Side project / Paul Muldoon

Word / Jude Nutter

Pillow talk / Jeni Olin

Cogitatio Mortis / Eric Pankey

Family math / Alan Michael Parker

Postcards from her alternate lives / Catherine Pierce

Horn / Robert Pinsky

Angels / Katha Pollitt

Bugcatching at twilight / D.A. Powell

To my father on the anniversary of his death / Gretchen Steele Pratt

Even more aphorisms and ten-second essays from vectors 3.0 / James Richardson

What my heart is turning / Anne Marie Rooney

Provenance / Mary Ruefle

Ghost aurora / David St. John

The Afterlife / Mary Jo Salter

The Smallest / James Schuyler

Nineteen thirty-eight / Charles Simic

Nowhere / Matthew Buckly Smith

Motown crown / Patricia Smith

Dream IV / Gerald Stern

Pantoum for the imperceptible / Bianca Stone

The Poem of the Spanish poet / Mark Strand

Thirteen months / Mary Jo Thompson

Elegy / Natasha Trethewey

Drunk at a party / Lee Upton

Thoreau and the lightning / David Wagoner

The Latch / Rosanna Warren

Time pieces / Rachel Wetzsteon

Ecclesiastes II:I / Richard Wilbur

A Hundred bones / C. K. Williams

Mix tape to be brought to her in rehab / David Wojahn

Toadstools / Charles Wright

Cycladic idyll : an apologia / Stephen Yenser.