The Best American Poetry 1990, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Jorie Graham. The book contains seventy-five poems with a range of poet-authors from a college freshman to the 1990 United States Poet Laureate. David Lehman publicly commented that poetry in America retains its vitality for both the poet and reader, after the 1989 series book attained bestseller status.[1]
Graham chose, as one of the best American poems published in the 12-month period, a work by her husband[2] at the time, James Galvin.
| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| "The Damned" | The Yale Review | |
| "The Sweeping Gesture" | Broadway | |
| "Notes from the Air" | The New Yorker | |
| "Victim of Himself" | The Atlantic Monthly | |
| "First Song/Bankei/1653/" | Denver Quarterly | |
| "Jealousy" | Empathy | |
| "Crucifixion" | American Poetry Review | |
| "The Life of Towns" | Grand Street | |
| "Wake Up" | Michigan Quarterly Review | |
| "My Cousin Muriel" | The New Yorker | |
| "'Boys on street corners in Santa Ana...'" | Who Whispered Near Me | |
| "Thinking" | Harvard Magazine | |
| "Dying in Your Garden of Death to Go Back into My Garden" | The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future | |
| "The Crumbling Infrastructure" | Southwest Review | |
| "Of Politics & Art" | American Poetry Review | |
| "The Chessboard Is on Fire" | Boulevard | |
| "To the Republic" | New Letters | |
| "This Land" | Grand Street | |
| "The Ice Age" | The Paris Review | |
| "The War" | New Letters | |
| "Duncan" | The Threepenny Review | |
| "Praise for Death" | The Gettysburg Review | |
| "Bell & Capitol" | Ontario Review | |
| "Berkeley Eclogue" | Human Wishes | |
| "Crossings" | The New Yorker | |
| "Eclogue of the Shepherd and the Townie" | The Sewanee Review | |
| "On Nothing" | The Hudson Review | |
| "No Greener Pastures" | Fortress | |
| "An Old-Fashioned Song" | The New Republic | |
| "Climbing Out of the Cage" | Denver Quarterly | |
| "The Victor Vanquished" | Antaeus | |
| "Perfection and Derangement" | o•blék | |
| "On the Bearing of Waitresses" | Transparent Gestures | |
| "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone" | The Atlantic Monthly | |
| "Gangue" | The Gettysburg Review | |
| "Facing It" | Dien Cai Dau | |
| "Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Scouting" | Western Humanities Review | |
| "Time" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Slipped Quadrant" | Avec | |
| "Road" | Hambone | |
| "Afternoon of a McGrath" | The Nation | |
| "Barbie's Ferrari" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make" | The Virginia Quarterly Review | |
| "Quatrains for Pegasus" | The Nation | |
| "The Morning Train" | The New Yorker | |
| "Adoration" | Black Warrior Review | |
| "Havana Birth" | Ploughshares | |
| "The Worrying" | Love Alone | |
| "La Malinche" | Temblor | |
| "There Will Be Animals" | Pyramid of Bone | |
| "Teratology" | Fine Madness | |
| "They" | The Threepenny Review | |
| "(2 pages from a long poem in progress)" | How(ever) | |
| "Six Hermetic Songs" | Sulfur | |
| "Pilgrimage" | Antaeus | |
| "Service Includes Free Lifetime Updating" | Hanging Loose | |
| "Japanese Presentation, I & II" | o•blék | |
| "The Old Causes" | Boulevard | |
| "Living Memory" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Switchblade" | God Hunger | |
| "Haze" | The New Yorker | |
| "AIDS Days" | These Days | |
| "The Initiate" | Antaeus | |
| "Transparent Itineraries: 1984" | Voyaging Portraits | |
| "Primos" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Last Night with Rafaella" | The Gettysburg Review | |
| "Saving My Skin from Burning" | Iowa Review | |
| "Orpheus Alone" | The New Yorker | |
| "Distance from Loved Ones" | Denver Quarterly | |
| "Aurora Borealis and the Body Louse" | Grand Street | |
| "The Cormorant" | Boulevard | |
| "A Wall in the Woods: Cummington" | The New Yorker | |
| "Reading the Bible Backwards" | Sarah's Choice | |
| "Saturday Morning Journal" | Antaeus | |
The following publications were represented more than once in this year's volume:
| American Poetry Review | 7 |
| The New Yorker | 7 |
| Antaeus | 4 |
| Grand Street | 3 |
| Denver Quarterly | 3 |
| The Atlantic Monthly | 2 |
| The Gettysburg Review | 2 |
| o•blék | 2 |
| The Threepenny Review | 2 |