The Best American Poetry 1992, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Charles Simic.
In the Forward, Lehman writes, "No critic will ever have the effect on our poets than certain of their grade school teachers had - the ones often credited by the poets themselves for their lifelong devotion to the art."[1]
Lehman's forward also mentioned various public comments about the nation's lack of interest in poetry and questions about its future.
| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| "Dance Mania" | The Paris Review | |
| "I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror" | Field | |
| "The Ungrateful Citizens" | The Paris Review | |
| "Poem at the New Year" | The New Yorker | |
| "Midwestern Villanelle" | Iowa Review | |
| "How I Painted Certain of My Pictures" | Hambone | |
| "Healing" | Iowa Review | |
| "Dear, My Compass..." | The New Yorker | |
| "The Crippled Godwit" | Ploughshares | |
| "Inevitably, She Declined" | Michigan Quarterly Review | |
| "Homage to Gerolamo Marcello" | The New Yorker | |
| "Sex" | The Sewanee Review | |
| "Nostalgia" | The Georgia Review | |
| "Other" | Grand Street | |
| "Famous Women--Claudette Colbert" | Fine Madness | |
| "Spring Letter" | Poetry | |
| "My Amaryllis" | Ploughshares | |
| "Smiles" | Iowa Review | |
| "The Bright Waterfall of Angels" | Iowa Review | |
| "A Little Heart-to-Heart with the Horizon" | Ploughshares | |
| "We're All Pharaohs When We Die" | The Paris Review | |
| "On Wanting to Grow Horns" | Witness | |
| "Voices Inside and Out" | Ploughshares | |
| "Vespers" | The New Yorker | |
| "Body Will" | ZYZZYVA | |
| "Manifest Destiny" | Michigan Quarterly Review | |
| "Poland of Death (IV)" | Tikkun | |
| "Elysian Fields" | The Paris Review | |
| "Spring Glen Grammar School" | The New Yorker | |
| "Infidelities" | The Paris Review | |
| "My Mother's Nipples" | Michigan Quarterly Review | |
| "St. Luke Painting the Virgin" | Raritan | |
| "Iowa Blues Bar Spiritual" | New England Review | |
| "Man on a Fire Escape" | The New Yorker | |
| "Identities" | Boulevard | |
| "Days of Autumn" | Grand Street | |
| "Like Most Revelations" | Boston Phoenix | |
| "Lost Fugue for Chet" | The Kenyon Review | |
| "Some Sort of Chronicler I Am" | The Kenyon Review | |
| "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" | The Ohio Review | |
| "Twelve O'clock" | The Paris Review | |
| "Admission of Failure" | Epoch | |
| "Mystery Stories" | Brooklyn Review | |
| "Saga: Four Variations on the Sonnet" | Ploughshares | |
| "Green" | Michigan Quarterly Review | |
| "This Hour and What Is Dead" | Ploughshares | |
| "Across These Landscapes of Early Darkness" | Iowa Review | |
| "All Hallows' Eve" | North American Review | |
| "" . . .The Storm is Passing Over"; She Sang" | Verse | |
| "Terminal" | Callaloo | |
| "Choosing an Author for Assurance in the Night" | Field | |
| "Honey" | The Atlantic Monthly | |
| "An Anointing" | Epoch | |
| "Red Trousseau" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Rain" | Poetry | |
| "Eighth Sky" | Grand Street | |
| "Avenue" | Boston Phoenix | |
| "The Sudden Appearance of a Monster at a Window" | Denver Quarterly | |
| "The Night the Lightning Bugs Lit Last in the Field Then Went Their Way" | AGNI | |
| "Plenitude" | New Letters | |
| "For a Friend in Travail" | Poetry | |
| "We Sat, So Patient" | Boulevard | |
| "Trial" | Western Humanities Review | |
| "Good Friday. Driving Westward." | The New Criterion | |
| "I Want to Marry You" | Another Chicago Magazine | |
| "Lucifer in Starlight" | Denver Quarterly | |
| "Anatolian Journey" | The New Yorker | |
| "Kamelopard" | The Formalist | |
| "Word Silence" | The Yale Review | |
| "Necrophiliac" | The Atlantic Monthly | |
| "Eyeglasses" | Exquisite Corpse | |
| "The Knot" | Antaeus | |
| "Winter-Worship" | Field | |
| "Depiction of Childhood" | Field | |
| "Vertumnal" | The Yale Review | |
In order of frequency, these are the publications most represented this year: