2003 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Volume I begins with a generous selection of Native American materials, then spans the years from the establishment of the American colonies to about 1900, a world on the brink of World War I and the modern era. Part One focuses on poetry from the very beginnings through the end of the eighteenth century. The expansion and development of a newly forged nation engendered new kinds of poetry. Part Two includes works from the early nineteenth century through the time of the Civil War. The poems in Part Three reflect the many issues affecting a nation undergoing tumultuous change: the Civil War, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, and cultural diversification.

Such well-recognized names as Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Phillis Wheatley, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Stephen Crane appear in this anthology alongside such less frequently anthologized poets as George Horton, Sarah Helen Whitman, Elizabeth Oakes-Smith, Frances Harper, Rose Terry Cooke, Helen Hunt Jackson, Adah Menken, Sarah Piatt, Ina Coolbrith, Emma Lazarus, Albery Whitman, Owl Woman (Juana Manwell) Sadakichi Hartmann, Ernest Fenollosa, James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and-virtually unknown as a poet-Abraham Lincoln. It also includes poems and songs reflecting the experiences of a variety of racial and ethnic groups.

About the Author
STEVEN GOULD AXELROD is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Robert Lowell: Life and Art and Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words.

CAMILLE ROMAN is Visiting Scholar at Brown University and Emeritus Professor of English at Washington State University. She is the author of Elizabeth Bishop's World War II-Cold War View.

THOMAS TRAVISANO is a professor of English at Hartwick College. He is the author of Elizabeth Bishop: Her Artistic Development and the principal editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

Reviews
"It belongs on the shelf of every library and of every individual who understand that the voices of the poets set the moral tone of the US." * Choice *
"By embracing the guiding principle of 'traditions and revolutions,' the editors of this marvelous anthology have produced a rich, exciting text that surprises, engages, and challenges readers like no other such book has done. Its thoughtful inclusiveness, lucid introductions, and helpful notes make it supremely teachable. This work establishes a new benchmark for poetry anthologies." -- Emory Elliott * editor, The Columbia Literary History of the United States *



Book Information
ISBN 9780813531625
Author Steven Gould Axelrod
Format Paperback
Page Count 768
Imprint Rutgers University Press
Publisher Rutgers University Press
Weight(grams) 936g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 48mm