Contents -- Editors' Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Theory of Flight (1935) -- 1. Poem Out of Childhood -- Poem Out of Childhood -- Song for Dead Children -- In a Dark House -- Effort at Speech between Two People -- Notes for a Poem -- Place-Rituals -- Wooden Spring -- Sonnet -- Letter, Unposted -- Sand-Quarry with Moving Figures -- Wedding Presents -- Three Sides of a Coin -- Breathing Landscape -- Four in a Family -- This House,This Country -- 2. Theory of Flight -- Preamble -- The Gyroscope -- The Lynchings of Jesus -- The Tunnel -- The Structure of the Plane -- Night Flight : New York -- Theory of Flight -- 3. The Blood Is Justified For Memory -- For Memory -- City of Monuments -- Study in a Late Subway -- Child and Mother -- Eccentric Motion -- Sundays, They Sleep Late -- Thousands of Days -- The Surrounded -- Burlesque -- Movie -- Metaphor to Action -- Citation for Horace Gregory -- Cats and a Cock -- The Blood Is Justified -- U.S. 1 (1938) -- 1. The Book of the Dead -- The Road -- West Virginia -- Statement: Phillippa Allen -- Gauley Bridge -- The Face of the Dam: Vivian Jones -- Praise of the Committee -- Mearl Blankenship -- Absalom -- The Disease -- George Robinson: Blues -- Juanita Tinsley -- The Doctors -- The Cornfield -- Arthur Peyton -- Alloy -- Power -- The Dam -- The Disease: After-Effects -- The Bill -- The Book of the Dead -- 2. Night-Music -- A Flashing Cliff -- Girl at the Play -- Burning Bush -- Eel -- Homage to Literature -- The Handclap -- Trophies -- Panacea -- In Hades, Orpheus -- The Drowning Young Man -- Boy with His Hair Cut Short -- Course -- More of a Corpse than a Woman -- Three Black Women -- Formosa -- Night-Music -- Driveway -- Lover as Fox -- Gift-Poem -- Woman and Emblems -- Outpost -- 3. Two Voyages -- The Cruise -- Mediterranean -- A Turning Wind (1939) -- 1. Moment of Proof.

Reading Time : 1 Minute 26 Seconds -- Song, the Brain-Coral -- Target Practice -- Otherworld -- Nuns in the Wind -- For Fun -- Correspondences -- Noguchi -- Seventh Avenue -- The Shortest Way Home -- Palos Verdes Cliffs -- Paper Anniversary -- From the Duck-Pond to the Carousel -- Asylum Song -- The Victims, a Play for the Home -- M-Day's Child -- Speech for the Assistant, from Houdini -- Judith -- 2. Lives -- Untitled -- Gibbs -- Ryder -- Chapman -- Ann Burlak -- Ives -- Wake Island (1942) -- Beast in View (1944) -- One Soldier -- 1. Beast in View -- Ajanta -- Mortal Girl -- Child in the Great Wood -- 2 -- Letter to the Front -- 3 -- The Soul and Body of John Brown -- The Green Wave (1948) -- "Let poems and bodies love and be given to air" -- Water Night -- Eyes of Night-Time -- This Place in the Ways -- Song, from "Mr. Amazeen on the River" -- Cloud, Airs, Carried Me Away -- Salamander -- His Head Is Full of Faces -- Mrs. Walpurga -- A Certain Music -- The Motive of All of It -- Green Limits -- The Children's Orchard -- Christmas Eve -- Crayon House -- A Charm for Cantinflas -- Traditional Tune -- Foghorn in Horror -- Summer, the Sacramento -- Speech of the Mother, from The Middle of the Air -- Then I Saw What the Calling Was -- Translations: Six Poems by Octavio Paz -- The Bird -- Poet's Epitaph -- Spark -- Two Bodies -- The Street -- Lovers -- Rari from the Marquesas -- Rari for Tahia and Piu -- Rari for O'Otua -- A True Confession -- Careful of the Day -- Rari for Hepuheku -- Rari -- Rari to Encourage Youth -- Rari, to Be Bothered by Mosquitoes -- Not Before I Fall Asleep -- Easter Eve 1945 -- Easter Eve 1945 -- Private Life of the Sphinx -- Nine Poems for the unborn child -- Orpheus (1949) -- Elegies (1949) -- First Elegy. Rotten Lake -- Second Elegy. Age of Magicians -- Third Elegy. The Fear of Form -- Fourth Elegy. The Refugees.

Fifth Elegy. A Turning Wind -- Sixth Elegy. River Elegy -- Seventh Elegy. Dream-Singing Elegy -- Eighth Elegy. Children's Elegy -- Ninth Elegy. The Antagonists -- Tenth Elegy. Elegy in Joy -- Body of Waking (1958) -- 1 -- Haying Before Storm -- Phaneron -- The Young Girl of the Mississippi Valley -- A Birth -- King's Mountain -- Mother Garden's Round -- Rite -- Ringling -- After Their Quarrel -- Tree -- Night Feeding -- The Return -- Unborn Song -- The Two Illuminations -- F.O.M. -- Exile of Music -- On the Death of Her Mother -- Untitled -- Hero Speech -- The Watchers -- A Ballad Theme -- Of Money.And the Past -- Untitled -- The Loan -- Pouring Milk Away -- Children, the Sandbar, that Summer -- Born in December -- The Sixth Night: Waking -- Nevertheless the Moon -- Speed, We Say -- The Birth of Venus -- The Place at Alert Bay -- Voices of Waking -- Divining Water -- 2. Translations: Octavio Paz -- Untitled -- Untitled -- Fable -- Day -- Proverbs -- Untitled -- Untitled -- Life of the Poet -- The Prisoner -- from Sun Stone -- 3 -- Suite for Lord Timothy Dexter -- 4 -- Are You Born?-I -- Powerplant -- Fields Where We Slept -- Portrait of a Man, with a Background of Holdings -- Body of Waking -- Willkie in The Gulliver -- He Had a Quality of Growth -- Are You Born?-2 -- Waterlily Fire (1962) -- The Speaking Tree -- To Enter That Rhythm Where the Self Is Lost -- For a Mexican Painter -- A Song of Another Tribe -- Song -- Waterlily Fire -- The Speed of Darkness (1968) -- 1. Clues -- The Poem as Mask -- What Do I Give You? -- The Transgress -- The Conjugation of the Paramecium -- Junk-Heap at Murano -- Clues -- In Our Time -- Double Dialogue: -- The Six Canons -- Forerunners -- Orgy -- The Overthrow of One O'Clock at Night -- Among Roses -- What I See -- Believing in Those Inexorable Laws -- Song : Love in Whose Rich Honor -- Niobe Now.

Song : The Star in the Nets of Heaven -- Air -- Gift -- Cries from Chiapas -- The War Comes into My Room -- Delta Poems -- Spirals and Fugues -- Anemone -- Fighting for Roses -- For My Son -- Poem -- The Power of Suicide -- The Seeming -- Song from Puck Fair -- Not Yet -- Landscape with Wave Approaching -- Segre Song -- Bunk Johnson Blowing -- Cannibal Bratuscha -- What Have You Brought Home from the Wars? -- One Month -- Silence of Volcanoes -- What They Said -- A Little Stone in the Middle of the Road, in Florida -- The Blue Flower -- Woman as Market -- Word of Mouth -- Endless -- 2. Games -- The Backside of the Academy -- Mountain : One from Bryant -- The Flying Red Horse -- 3 -- The Outer Banks -- 4. Lives -- Akiba -- Käthe Kollwitz -- 5 -- The Speed of Darkness -- Breaking Open (1973) -- 1. Searching / Not Searching -- Waking This Morning -- Despisals -- What Do We See? -- Looking at Each Other -- Desdichada -- Voices -- Fire -- Waiting for Icarus -- from City of Paradise -- The Question -- In Her Burning -- Rondel -- More Clues -- Myth -- Searching / Not Searching -- A Simple Experiment -- Along History -- Boys of These Men Full Speed -- All the Little Animals -- Next -- Two Years -- Iris -- 2. Orange and Grape -- Ballad of Orange and Grape -- Rock Flow, River Mix -- Martin Luther King, Malcolm X -- Looking -- Don Baty, the Draft Resister -- Te Hanh : Long-Ago Garden -- Welcome from War -- Facing Sentencing -- Secrets of American Civilization -- Wherever -- Bringing -- A Louis Sonnet -- After Melville -- The Writer -- Gradus Ad Parnassum -- From a Play : Publisher's Song -- In the Night the Sound Woke Us -- In the Underworld -- Afterwards -- Flying to Hanoi -- It Is There -- The Running of the Grunion -- Sacred Lake -- 3. Northern Poems -- Songs of the Barren Grounds -- I Recognize This Song -- The Black Ones, the Great Ones -- Trout Fishing.

How Lovely It Is -- The Word-Fisher -- Stroking Songs -- Stroking Songs, Childhood Songs -- 4 -- Breaking Open -- The Gates (1976) -- 1 -- St. Roach -- Dream-Drumming -- Double Ode -- Painters -- Rune -- How We Did It -- Islands -- Blue Spruce -- Artifact -- Ms. Lot -- Boys in the Branches -- Song : Lying in Daylight -- Hypnogogic Figure -- The Lost Romans -- Canal -- For Kay Boyle -- Resurrection of the Right Side -- The Wards -- The Sun-Artist -- Poem White Page White Page Poem -- Fable -- Neruda, the Wine -- Before Danger -- Song : Remembering Movies -- Work, for the Day Is Coming -- Recovering -- Parallel Invention -- Poem -- Not to Be Printed, Not to Be Said, Not to Be Thought -- Back Tooth -- Destruction of Grief -- Trinity Churchyard -- Burnishing, Oakland -- The Iris-Eaters -- Slow Death of the Dragon -- Mendings -- Then -- 2 -- The Gates -- Juvenilia -- Antigone -- Cities of the Morning -- Autumn in the Garden -- The Ballad of the Missing Lines -- November Sketches -- To a Lady Turning Middle-Aged -- Place-Poems: New York -- Untitled -- For an Aesthete -- Pastorale No.2 -- A New Poem -- An Unborn Poet -- Abbreviations -- Annotations -- Textual Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Titles -- Index of First Lines.