The Best American Poetry 1999, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Robert Bly.
| Poet | Poem | Where poem previously appeared |
| "The Selfishness of the Poetry Reader" | The Café Review | |
| "Story" | Verse | |
| "Bill Matthews Coming Along (1942-1997)" | Figdust | |
| "Catch" | The Sewanee Review | |
| "Foreign-Domestic" | Conjunctions | |
| "Tired Sex" | The Atlantic Monthly | |
| "Narrow Road, Presidents' Day" | American Poetry Review | |
| "Sea of Faith" | The Southern Review | |
| "Because I Am" | Seneca Review | |
| "the mississippi river empties into the gulf" | River City | |
| "Dharma" | Poetry | |
| "Mitch" | Solo | |
| "Betrayal" | Hambone | |
| "Taproot" | Crab Orchard Review | |
| "Pasternak" | New England Review | |
| "Madam's Heart" | The Prose Poem | |
| "A Buddha in the Woodpile" | Blasts | |
| "My Father's Fields" | Poetry | |
| "Vita Nova" | The New Yorker | |
| "Breastbone" | The Bitter Oleander | |
| "The Last Election" | Many Mountains Moving | |
| "Smile" | The Yale Review | |
| "September" | The Antioch Review | |
| "What Would Freud Say?" | Cream City Review | |
| "The Envoy" | Blue Sofa | |
| "Lawrence" | Ploughshares | |
| "Beach Whispers" | The New Yorker | |
| "Man Script" | Literal Latte | |
| "The Story of Progress" | Verse | |
| "The Circle Theatre" | Alkali Flats | |
| "Last Will and Testament" | Potomac Review | |
| "Two Prose Poems" | Rosebud | |
| "The Patient" | Poetry | |
| "A Curse on a Thief" | Harvard Review | |
| "Why Regret?" | The New Yorker | |
| "The Erotic Philosophers" | The Yale Review | |
| "1989" | Solo | |
| "Scapegoat" | Ontario Review | |
| "The Triumph of Narcissus and Aphrodite" | Black Warrior Review | |
| "Nunc Dimittis" | DoubleTake | |
| "The Shipfitter's Wife" | DoubleTake | |
| "The Sleepless Grape" | Water Stone | |
| "First Love" | Kalliope | |
| "The Return" | The Atlantic Monthly | |
| "A Charade" | Ploughshares | |
| "The Swim" | Poetry | |
| "Misgivings" | Poetry | |
| "The Characters of Dirty Jokes" | Mid-American Review | |
| "A Ball" | Partisan Review | |
| from "Sonny's Face. Sonny's Hands" | The Southern Review | |
| "What It Meant" | The Southern Review | |
| "Flare" | Shenandoah | |
| "And Now" | Acorn | |
| "Say You Love Me" | Fence | |
| "Writing from Memory" | Meridian | |
| "Hemingway's Garden" | New Millennium Writings | |
| "Seven Skins" | The Progressive | |
| "That Will to Divest" | The Yale Review | |
| "Last recording session/for papa joe" | Painted Bride Quarterly | |
| "The Public and the Private Spheres" | Salmagundi | |
| "Longing and Wonder" | Common Sense | |
| "Barber College Haircut" | AGNI | |
| "A Shearling Coat" | The Hudson Review | |
| "Housewarming" | AGNI | |
| "A Star Is Born in the Eagle Nebula" | The Gettysburg Review | |
| "Ways to Live" | Cream City Review | |
| "The Drunkard's Daughter" | Blue Sofa | |
| "A Moment" | Paterson Literary Review | |
| "Deer Crossing the Sea" | Green Mountains Review | |
| "The Minefield" | Tor House Newsletter | |
| "Thoreau and the Crickets" | Ploughshares | |
| "This Pleasing Anxious Being" | The New Yorker | |
| "Archetypes" | Ontario Review | |
| "American Twilight" | Partisan Review | |
| "The Thread of Sunlight" | The Journal of Family Life | |