Contents
New Poems
What Poetry Is For
Credo
Homeland Security
Letter on the Brink of War
Good-bye to Berlin
My Favorite President
In Memory of My Foreskin
Holding Up the Universe
Oedipus Schmoedipus
If This Be Jews
Too Late
Mission Accomplished
What Poetry Is For
Judgment at Nuremberg
Dead Man Walking
Dead Man Walking
In Praise of My Prostate
When It Struck Him
Taking My Breath Away
Mrs. Wallace Stevens
Prospero, in Retirement
After the Fall
After the Fall
Selected Poems
from Stand Up, Friend, With Me (1963)
Hydra
Donkeys
Prologue
A Journey
A Bill to My Father
The Telephone
The Statue of Liberty
Sonny Hugg and the Porcupine
Graffiti
Unwanted
The Sleeper
At the Coney Island Aquarium: An Ode for Ookie, the Older Walrus Child or The Sibling Rival
The Charmed Pool
Ode to Fidel Castro
from Variety Photoplays (1967)
Curse of the Cat Woman
Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein
Sweet Gwendolyn and the Countess
Whatever Happened to May Caspar? A Narration for an Animated Cartoon
Nancy
The Life of Joan Crawford
World War II
Giant Pacific Octopus
Tailspin
from A Full Heart (1973)
New York
Being Jewish
The Lost, Dancing
David’s Dream
Sharks
from Stars in My Eyes (1978)
Mae West
Comeback
from New and Selected Poems, from the Book of My Life (1987)
Triad
Oh, Brother!
From Poland
Narcissus
Poems on a Theme
Afghanistan
To Love
from Counting Myself Lucky, Poems 1963–1992 (1992)
The Winners and the Losers
Waiting for the Communists
Blinks
Dietrich
Hear, O Israel
Trop Tard Pour Paris
The Last Bohemians
World Traveler
Rule of the Desert
Sex Among the Savages
Callas
The Guide
Garbo
from A Frieze for a Temple of Love, Poems 1993–1997 (1998)
Colombian Gold
My Sister, the Queen
Magic Words
Colossus
St. Petersburg, 1918
The Bukowski Option
from “A Man and His Penis”
from “My Life as a Dog”
Sorry, I Never Slept with Allen Ginsberg
Acknowledgments