The editors of this anthology asked more than one hundred American poets from divergent backgrounds and literary traditions the following question: How would you say goodbye to the twentieth century? In the pages of this anthology, we find the answers - answers that reflect on the past, weaving strands of memory and history, and others that look to the future.

"The twentieth century is where we have lived our lives," say Codrescu and Rosenthal in their introduction. "Where we were constituted to be utterly unlike the centuries that came before us." The twentieth century brought steel girders and engines, the movies, world wars and genocide, mass consumerism, and the new-found religion of science and technology.

American Poets Say Goodbye to the Twentieth Century not only explores a subject as vast as this century, but brings together a profound chorus of contemporary American voices. The editors deliberately straddled the customary fault lines in American poetry, approaching poets from all walks of verse. Writers both new and established are represented here, including Paul Auster, Charles Bukowski, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, Charles Simic, David Trinidad, and Anne Waldman.