The Best American Poetry 1989, a volume in The Best American Poetry series , was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Donald Hall.
One of the poems Hall selected for this edition was written by his wife, [1] Jane Kenyon. Hall also selected one of his own poems as one of the 75 best American poems of the year.
| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| A. R. Ammons | "Anxiety's Prosody" | Poetry |
| John Ashbery | "Meanwhile..." | Mudfish |
| Beth Bentley | "Norther Idylls" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Elizabeth Bishop | "It is marvellous..." | American Poetry Review |
| Robert Bly | "My Father at 85" | Common Ground |
| Catherine Bowman | "Twins of Gazelle Which Feed Among the Lilies" | The Paris Review |
| George Bradley | "Of the Knowledge of God and Evil" | The New Yorker |
| David Budbill | "What I Heard at the Discount Department Store" | Longhouse |
| Michael Burkhard | "Hotel Tropicana" | Epoch |
| Amy Clampitt | "A Minor Tremor" | Boulevard |
| Tom Clark | "For Robert Duncan" | Exquisite Corpse (magazine) |
| Clark Coolidge | "Paris..." | o•blék |
| Douglas Crase | "True Solar Holiday" | The Yale Review |
| Robert Creeley | "Age" | New American Writing |
| Peter Davison | "Letter from the Poetry Editor" | The New Criterion |
| David Dooley | "The Reading" | The Volcano Inside |
| Rita Dove | "The Late Notebooks of Albrecht Durer" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Stephen Dunn | "Letting the Puma Go" | Poetry |
| Russell Edson | "The Rabbit Story" | Willow Springs |
| Daniel Mark Epstein | "The Rivals" | The Paris Review |
| Elaine Equi | "A Date with Robbe-Grillet" | New American Writing |
| Aaron Fogel | "BW" | Western Humanities Review |
| Alice Fulton | "Powers of Congress" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Suzanne Gardinier | "Voyage" | Grand Street |
| Debora Greger | "In Violet" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Linda Gregg | "A Dark Thing Inside the Day" | American Poetry Review |
| Thom Gunn | "Cafeteria in Boston" | The Times Literary Supplement |
| Donald Hall | "History" | The New Yorker |
| John Hollander | "Kinneret" | Harp Lake |
| Paul Hoover | "Twenty-five (from The Novel)" | New American Writing |
| Marie Howe | "The Good Reason for Our Forgetting" | Partisan Review |
| Andrew Hudgins | "Heat Lightning in a Time of Drought" | The Georgia Review |
| Rodney Jones | "Every Day There Are New Memos" | The Georgia Review |
| Lawrence Joseph | "An Awful Lot Was Happening" | Poetry |
| Donald Justice | "Dance Lessons of the Thirties" | The New Criterion |
| Vickie Karp | "Getting Dressed in the Dark" | The New York Review of Books |
| Jane Kenyon | "Three Songs at the End of Summer" | Poetry |
| Kenneth Koch | "Six Hamlets" | One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays |
| Phillis Levin | "The Ransom" | Grand Street |
| Philip Levine | "Dog Poem" | The Gettysburg Review |
| Anne MacNaughton | "Teste Moanial" | Exquisite Corpse |
| Harry Mathews | "Condo Auction" | The Paris Review |
| Robert Mazzacco | "Kidnapped" | The New Yorker |
| James McCorkle | "Showing Us the Fields" | Boulevard |
| Robert McDowell | "The Fifties" | The Hudson Review |
| Wesley McNair | "The Abandonment" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| James Merrill | "A Room at the Heart of Things" | The Inner Room |
| Thylias Moss | "The Warmth of Hot Chocolate" | Epoch |
| Sharon Olds | "The Wellspring" | American Poetry Review |
| Mary Oliver | "Some Questions You Might Ask" | Harvard Magazine |
| Steve Orlen | "The Bridge of Sighs" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Michael Palmer | "Sun" | Sun |
| Bob Perelman | "Movie" | Captive Audience |
| Robert Pinsky | "At Pleasure Bay" | Raritan |
| Anna Rabinowitz | "Sappho Comments on an Exhibition of Expressionist Landscapes" | Sulfur |
| Mark Rudman | "The Shoebox" | The Paris Review |
| Yvonne Sapia | "Valetino's Hair" | The Reaper |
| Lynda Schraufnagel | "Trappings" | Shenandoah |
| David Shapiro | "The Lost Golf Ball" | House (Blown Apart) |
| Karl Shapiro | "Tennyson" | The New Yorker |
| Charles Simic | "The White Room" | Western Humanities Review |
| Louis Simpson | "The People Next Door" | Poetry |
| W. D. Snodgrass | "The Memory of Cock Robin Dwarfs W. D." | Michigan Quarterly Review |
| Gary Snyder | "Building" | Witness |
| Elizabeth Spires | "Sunday Afternoon at Fulham Palace" | Iowa Review |
| David St. John | "Broken Gauges" | Green Mountains Review |
| William Stafford | "Last Day" | The Ohio Review |
| George Starbuck | "Reading the Facts about Frost in The Norton Anthology" | Poetry |
| Patricia Storace | "Movie" | The New York Review of Books |
| Mark Strand | "Reading in Place" | Grand Street |
| Eleanor Ross Taylor | "Harvest, 1925" | Seneca Review |
| Jean Valentine | "Trust Me" | Boulevard |
| Richard Wilbur | "Lying" | New and Collected Poems |
| Alan Williamson | "The Muse of Distance" | The Muse of Distance |
| Jay Wright | "Madrid" | The Yale Review |
John Crowe Ransom was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon College, he was the first editor of the widely regarded Kenyon Review. Highly respected as a teacher and mentor to a generation of accomplished students, he also was a prize-winning poet and essayist.
Robert Elwood Bly was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), which spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and is a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.
William James Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant. Kenyon was the second wife of poet, editor, and critic Donald Hall who made her the subject of many of his poems.
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Hall was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard, and Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft.
This article presents lists of historical events related to the writing of poetry during 2004. The historical context of events related to the writing of poetry in 2004 are addressed in articles such as History of Poetry Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Jane Hirshfield is an American poet, essayist, and translator.
The Best American Poetry series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.
Liam Rector was an American poet, essayist and educator. He had administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. He was also the founder of the graduate Writing Seminars program at Bennington College.
Suzanne Gardinier is an American poet. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Wesley McNair is an American poet, writer, editor, and professor. He has authored 10 volumes of poetry, most recently, Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems, The Unfastening, and Dwellers in the House of the Lord. He has also written three books of prose, including a memoir, The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry. In addition, he has edited several anthologies of Maine writing, and served as a guest editor in poetry for the 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual.