The Best American Poetry 2006, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman (general editor), and poet Billy Collins, guest editor.
The volume received some negative reviews. A review in the RATTLE by G. Tod Stone stated that "[w]hat establishment-order literati like Lehman and Collins are succeeding in doing, more than anything else, is keeping American poetry from being the best." http://www.rattle.com/ereviews/bap2006.htm
On the other hand, and more positively, James Owens wrote in the Pedestal Review that "[r]eaders who care about poetry need The Best American Poetry 2006. Get it. Read it. Just don’t stop there." https://web.archive.org/web/20070927184159/http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/Content/cb.asp?cbid=5124; writing in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Marion K. Stocking, remarked that "If a selection of the poets in Collins’s collection went on the road with their poems they should be reading to packed houses." http://www.bpj.org/poems/bksbrief_57-2.html
| Poet | Poem | Publication(s) where poem previously appeared | |
| "Verities" | Poetry | ||
| "See the Pyramids Along the Nile" | Boulevard | ||
| from "Couple from Hell" | Barrow Street | ||
| "A Worldly Country" | The New Yorker | ||
| "Speech in a Chamber" | The Paris Review | ||
| "Letter from My Ancestors" | Margie | ||
| Ilya Bernstein | "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" | Fulcrum | |
| Gaylord Brewer | "Apologia to the Blue Tit" | River Styx | |
| "Rhetorical Figures" | Hayden's Ferry Review | ||
| Laura Cronk | "Sestina for the Newly Married" | LIT | |
| "Our Generation" | The Kenyon Review | ||
| "Toward Some Bright Moment" | American Poetry Review | ||
| "Please Don't Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen" | Columbia Poetry Review | ||
| "The Land of Is" | The Georgia Review | ||
| "Souvenir" | Shenandoah | ||
| Megan Gannon | "List of First Lines" | Third Coast | |
| "For My Niece Sidney, Age Six" | American Poetry Review | ||
| "Bust of a Young Boy in the Snow" | Five Points | ||
| George Green | "The Death of Winckelmann" | The New Criterion | |
| "My First Mermaid" | The Kenyon Review | ||
| "The Curve" | Five Points | ||
| "Monsieur Pierre est mort" | Rhino | ||
| from "Sects from A to Z" | Poetry | ||
| "Bird, Weasel, Fountain" | The Cincinnati Review | ||
| "Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women" | Michigan Quarterly Review | ||
| "On the Way to the Doctor's" | New Letters | ||
| "The Problem of Describing Color" | The New Yorker | ||
| "Hour" | CROWD | ||
| "Talk" | Gulf Coast | ||
| "My career as a director" | The Gettysburg Review | ||
| "The Ferry" | Harvard Review | ||
| Laura Kasischke | "At Gettysburg" | New England Review | |
| "Just a second ago" | The Cincinnati Review | ||
| "Seventeen Ways from Tuesday" | Subtropics | ||
| "The Laws of Probability in Levittown" | The Hat | ||
| "Found" | Iodine Poetry Journal | ||
| "Sally's Hair" | The Kenyon Review | ||
| Mark Kraushaar | "Tonight" | The Gettysburg Review | |
| Julie Larios | "Double Abecedarian: Please Give Me" | The Georgia Review | |
| "Demographic" | The Alaska Quarterly Review | ||
| Reb Livingston | "That's Not Butter" | MiPoesias | |
| "Eyes Scooped Out and Replaced by Hot Coals" | Five Points | ||
| "Blenheim" | Five Points | ||
| "Albert Hinckley" | The Cincinnati Review | ||
| "Briefcase of Sorrow" | Crab Orchard Review | ||
| "The Poet with His Face in His Hands" | The New Yorker | ||
| "Small Town Rocker" | The Canary | ||
| "The Sharper the Berry" | New American Writing | ||
| "Race" | Michigan Quarterly Review | ||
| "Two Poets Meet" | Iowa Review | ||
| "The Great Poem" | Nightsun | ||
| Betsy Retallack | "Roadside Special" | Endicott Review | |
| "The Other Woman's Point of View" | The Kenyon Review | ||
| "Discounting Lynn" | failbetter.com | ||
| "Thin" | Poetry | ||
| "A Phone Call to the Future" | The Georgia Review | ||
| Vejay Sheshadri | "Memoir" | The New Yorker | |
| "Misjudged Fly Ball" | The Cincinnati Review | ||
| "House of Cards" | The Virginia Quarterly Review | ||
| "Homesick" | Ecotone | ||
| "The Loser" | Crazyhorse | ||
| Sue Ellen Thompson | "Body English" | Connecticut Review | |
| "Misprision" | LIT | ||
| "What I Never Told You About the Abortion" | Margie | ||
| "Counterman" | Shiny International | ||
| "Harvesting the Cows" | The Kenyon Review | ||
| "The Driver" | Margie | ||
| "Prayer to Tear the Sperm-Dam Down" | Atlanta Review | ||
| "Ponies" | The Atlantic Monthly | ||
| "Sex Elegy" | Verse | ||
| Susan Wood | "Gratification" | Five Points | |
| "A Happy Thought" | FIELD | ||
| "Religion" | The Gettysburg Review | ||
| "The Call" | New England Review | ||
| "Clam Ode" | POOL |