Index of titles and first lines

(Titles and sub-titles are shown in italics, first lines in roman type.)

  1. A Cappella 65
  2. A Lock of Her Hair 181
  3. A Photograph of Philip Levine on the Brooklyn Promenade, May 2000, Lower Manhattan in the Background 194
  4. About Language 71
  5. Above the playground, from the hung-out 29
  6. Affirmations 140
  7. After a Rainstorm 178
  8. After the horse went down 135
  9. All my life I have been bothered by them 190
  10. All the science notwithstanding, it’s still 76
  11. Amazing Grace 117
  12. American Fear 173
  13. American Manhood 42
  14. Anatomy of Melancholy 216
  15. Angels 60
  16. Anything the River Gives 85
  17. Apology 204
  18. Appalonea 37
  19. Art 103
  20. Arthur Lieberman, the cousin in Levine’s poem 194
  21. As a boy I flogged a cornsnake to death 89
  22. As a hoodoo-voodoo, get-you-back-to-me tool 181
  23. At the Beginning of Another War 196
  24. At the lower fence line under the stars 157
  1. Babel 207
  2. Basalt, granite, tourmaline, the male wash 85
  3. BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY (2010), from 155
  4. Beautiful Country 165
  5. Beautiful, the nine-hundred-pound round 158
  6. Because I have come to the fence at night 178
  7. Because it is not enough to open the door 100
  8. Behold the amazing artificial arm, a machine 170
  9. Bridge 152
  10. But O you nefarious marionettes 96
  1. C.O. 52
  2. Called out of dream by the pitch and screech 19
  3. Campfire 182
  4. Catechism 91
  5. Cathedral of thorns, brambly fist 73
  6. Cemetery Moles 179
  7. Cenotaph 211
  8. Cigarettes 76
  9. Cigarettes pilfered two at a time 60
  10. Civics 199
  11. Clemency 147
  12. Confession 89
  13. Conjure 110
  14. Coroner’s Report 16
  15. County 159
  16. County of innumerable nowheres, half its dogs 159
  1. Damn the rain anyway, she says 71
  2. Dark Forest 101
  3. Dear Father 15
  4. Deliverance 94
  5. Discretion 137
  6. Do Not Go 168
  7. Do You Love Me? 142
  8. During the heat of summer days, they sprawl 88
  1. EARTHLY MEDITATIONS 114
  2. Economics 45
  3. Every Night the Long Swim 172
  4. Explanatory 143
  5. Exxon 170

  1. Fellowship 92
  2. Fish Dreams 149
  3. For hours the boy fought sleep 44
  4. For One Who Prays for Me 192
  5. For the Last Summer 48
  6. For the twigs, being dry and loosely stacked, burned 182
  7. From Lumaghi Mine 15
  8. From open water at the lake’s 112
  9. Full moon and wide forest trail make the headphones possible 184
  1. Glossolalia 96
  1. Hay Day 158
  2. He also finds the wood and steel beautiful 187
  3. He learned economics in the shade 45
  4. Heart Attack 22
  5. Heavy thatch of leaf and needle 203
  6. Highway 12, Just East of Paradise 148
  7. His Father’s Whistle 44
  8. Horseflies 135
  9. How the buck could have tangled himself 103
  1. I am in favor of this pair of ruffed grouse 140
  2. I begin again. There is so much 16
  3. I do not wish to hurt her, who loves me 192
  4. I found it in the woods, moss-mottled 26
  5. I left the man with the steam cleaner all alone 202
  6. I Like the Wind 161
  7. I love the way the woods arrange themselves 101
  8. I miss her, the old dog 172
  9. I place two pennies, one on either rail 108
  10. I was young and leaned 39
  11. I would speak of that grief 25
  12. Ice Fishing 112
  13. In the field out back 24
  14. IN THE BANK OF BEAUTIFUL SINS (1995), from 59
  15. In the biographies of Rilke, you get the feeling 198
  16. In the dull ache that is midnight for a boy 42
  17. In the thicket just west of my shack 186
  18. Indolent and watery, the nightcrawlers sprawl 106
  19. It survived the loud, jostling train 35
  20. It takes him a week, maybe nine days 193
  1. Just moments before the dogs and I came 204
  1. Kissing a Horse 150
  1. Last year, too far into my life 62
  2. Letter to a Young Poet 198
  3. LIVES OF THE ANIMALS (2003), from 131
  4. Long interlocked ribly abundance scale 96
  5. Lucy Doolin, first day on the job, stroked his goatee 216
  6. Lull 14
  1. Majestic 83
  2. Mammoth 206
  3. Man of his age, he believed in the things 54
  4. Meditation at Bedrock Canyon 120
  5. MOON IN A MASON JAR (1986), from 17
  6. Moonlight: Chickens on the Road 19
  7. More Rain 106
  8. Morelity 203
  9. Most are not blind, but still 179
  10. Mouth 200
  11. My father hated loving dogs, since they did so shed 168
  1. Never especially inclined mathematically, my father 211
  2. NEW POEMS 189
  3. News 201
  4. Night Music (‘The bass drum ka-thumps…’) 123
  5. Night Music (‘Full moon and wide forest trail…’) 184

  1. No words can tell what they feel, how 69
  2. Not a scent so much as a bouquet 151
  3. Not the wood, which is white-to-beige-to-red 180
  1. Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings 150
  2. Old two-hearted sadness, old blight 80
  3. On a long walk over the mountain you’d hear 133
  4. Over the trough, the long face of the horse 147
  1. Paradise 96
  2. Parents 80
  3. Poetry 81
  4. Prayer for the Winter 108
  5. Progress 163
  1. Ravens at Deer Creek 57
  2. REIGN OF SNAKES (1999), from 87
  3. Reign of Snakes 88
  4. Religion 191
  5. Responsibility 157
  6. Resurrection 98
  7. Returning the refilled feeder to its hanger on the tree 206
  8. Revival 88
  1. Scarred by a long gone buck’s rubbing 209
  2. Sensitive fellow and bellower of brimstone 65
  3. Seven wild turkeys have assembled 199
  4. She had brought home just a single white wing was all 145
  5. She thinks the caught trout’s eye must see 149
  6. She’s twelve and she’s asking the dog 142
  7. Sinatra 50
  8. Skull of a Snowshoe Hare 26
  9. Slow Dreams 190
  10. So here is the old buck 154
  11. Something’s dead in that stand of fir 57
  12. Sometimes the woods at night are so still 214
  13. Soundings 213
  14. Spring, and the first full crop of dandelions gone 114
  15. Stop and Listen 214
  16. Sweetbreads 138
  1. That skinny fuck-up, all recklessness and bones 50
  2. That summer with a thousand Julys 47
  3. Thatcher Bitchboy 145
  4. The Afterlife 114
  5. The bass drum ka-thumps, the snare’s a wire 123
  6. The Beliefs of a Horse 24
  7. The birdhouse made from a gourd is wired 213
  8. The Bramble 73
  9. The Burned Cemetery 107
  10. The Church of Omnivorous Light 133
  11. The Crèche 35
  12. The doe, at a dead run, was dead 148
  13. The end of it, the start, a heart speck 127
  14. The Fall 90
  15. The Glow 29
  16. The hackberry tree, a static of twigs and branches 143
  17. The language he speaks and writes is spoken 207
  18. The last thing the old dog brought home 191
  19. The Longing of Eagles 69
  20. The men who made the railroad bed 92
  21. The Model 62
  22. The Name 127
  23. The only word for it, his white Lincoln’s arc 83
  24. The Other World 154
  25. The Overcoat 56
  26. The Owl 39
  27. The Pumpkin Tree 105
  28. The River Itself 193
  29. THE SINKING OF CLAY CITY (1979), from 13
  30. The Sound Barrier 28
  31. The three-bladed, dunce-capped agitator pulsed 78

  1. The vast basaltic flows cooled to columns 98
  2. The winter sun blinded, glass buildings 56
  3. The word for her, I know now, was florid 94
  4. There is nothing of her body he can’t 110
  5. There may have been a time when 37
  6. There’s a mountain and a hundred miles 201
  7. They had five cigarettes going. Also a joint 165
  8. Throwing his small, blond son 22
  9. Thymus of the neck, and of the stomach 138
  10. Tick-tick, the clicks of the paper wasps 117
  11. To Work 78
  12. Torch Songs 25
  13. Triage 209
  1. Under a faded wooden soda crate filled almost 196
  2. Understand the years of drought, the vast expanse 107
  3. Unloved, unlovely, the bull thistle slouches 120
  4. Up a lattice of sumac and into the spars 105
  1. Wait 187
  2. We are at or near that approximate line 161
  3. We left the quarter peep shows, the lurid skin 52
  4. We were in our beds or daydreaming 28
  5. We’re in a new state, and the dandelions 81
  6. Wearing only moonglow 137
  7. What Is Yellow About the Yellow Pine? 180
  8. What it is is a company selling ‘clothing 173
  9. WHAT MY FATHER BELIEVED (1991), from 41
  10. What My Father Believed 54
  11. When she bought the thrift shop ventriloquist’s dummy 200
  12. Which Last 186
  13. While You Were Out of Town 202
  14. Why Do the Crickets Sing? 100
  15. Why snakes? Always snakes? 90
  16. Wind piled husks at the door 14
  17. Winter Bale 151
  1. You begin to fear all the nowheres are somewheres now 163
  2. You must understand the river 152
  3. ‘You want to taste what’s good, you got to lick 91