Sharon Olds
Take the I Out

David Graham & Kate Sontag: Introduction
Containing Multitudes

I. Staying News: Critical & Historical Perspectives

William Matthews
Personal and Impersonal

Joan Aleshire
Staying News: A Defense of the Lyric

Sydney Lea
Making a Case; or, "Where Are You Coming From?"

Alan Williamson
Stories about the Self (I & II)

Joseph Bruchac
The Self within the Circle

Billy Collins
My Grandfather's Tackle Box: The Limitations of Memory-Driven Poetry


II. Our Better Halves: Autobiographical Musings

David Graham
Voluminous Underwear; or, Why I Write Self-Portraits

Stanley Plumly
Autobiography and Archetype

Colette Inez
Family Talk: Confessional Poet? Not Me

Thylias Moss
My Better Half

Frank Bidart
Borges and I

Claudia Rankine
The First Person in the Twenty-First Century

Annie Finch
Coherent Decentering: Toward a New Model of the Poetic Self

Yusef Komunyakaa
The Autobiographical "I": An Archive of Metaphor, Imagery, and Innuendo


III. Degrees of Fidelity: Ethical & Aesthetic Considerations

Kate Sontag
Mother, May I?: Writing with Love

Ted Kooser
Lying for the Sake of Making Poems

Carol Frost
Self-Pity

Stephen Dunn
Degrees of Fidelity

Andrew Hudgins
The Glass Anvil: "The Lies of an Autobiographer"

Brendan Galvin
The Contemporary Poet and the Natural World

Kimiko Hahn
Blunt Instrument: A Zuihitsu


IV. Codes of Silence: Women & Autobiography

Pamela Gemin
Bless Me, Sisters

Louise Gluck
The Forbidden

Judith Harris
Breaking the Code of Silence: Ideology and Women's Confessional Poetry

Kimberly Blaeser
The Voices We Carry

Carol Muske-Dukes
Women and Poetry: Some Notes

Marilyn Chin
Translating Self: Stealing from Wang Wei, Kowtowing to Hughes, Hooking Up with Keats, Undone by Donne

Alicia Ostriker
Beyond Confession: The Poetics of Postmodern Witness

Adrienne Rich
In Those Years