The Columbia Anthology of American PoetryJay Parini Columbia University Press, 1995 - 757 pages In the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville suggested that the poetry of the new American democratic state, free from the staggering weight of centuries of European aristocracy and tradition, would focus on "man alone... his passions, his doubts, his rare properties and inconceivable wretchedness." For hundreds of years, American poets have presented their various images of the land and its people. But what is "American poetry?" Is there truly such a thing as an American poetic tradition, spanning over nearly four centuries from colonial times to the turn of the millennium? In The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, Jay Parini, a respected American poet and critic in his own right, offers an authoritative survey of the elusive category that is the poetry of the American people. The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry covers all of the canonical American poets, from the colonial to the contemporary-Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Adrienne Rich are all included. But Parini has also selected a broad sampling of poetry from voices that have been heard as widely over the years. Here, for the first time, is a thorough collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry by women, Native American, and African Americans. Within these pages readers will find the many different traditions that make up the expansive collage of American poetry. Here are the Transcendentalists-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau; and the Imagists-William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, H.D., and Carl Sandburg. Readers will discover also the early twentieth-century movement of African-American poetic expression, known as the Harlem Renaissance-James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Langston Hughes are all solidly represented in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Jay Parini's introduction deftly guides us into the rich tradition of poetry in our country. Whether in search of a well-known classic or a poem that is not yet considered part of the American poetic tradition, readers will find much to enjoy in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Anne Bradstreet 16121672 | 21 |
Before the Birth of One of Her Children | 27 |
First Series I kenning through astronomy divine | 48 |
The Wild Honey Suckle | 54 |
Phillis Wheatley 17531784 | 61 |
Joel Barlow 17541812 | 68 |
The Prairies | 81 |
John Crowe Ransom 18881974 | 397 |
T S Eliot 18881965 | 400 |
Conrad Aiken 18891973 | 418 |
So she came back into | 431 |
Melvin Beaunearus Tolson 18981966 | 444 |
From The Bridge To Brooklyn Bridge | 457 |
All Things | 470 |
Arna Bontemps 19021973 | 482 |
A November Landscape | 94 |
John Greenleaf Whittier 18071892 | 108 |
Barbara Frietchie 114 | 114 |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 18071882 | 136 |
Oliver Wendell Holmes 18091894 | 150 |
Frances Sargent Osgood 18111850 | 163 |
LightWinged Smoke Icarian Bird | 176 |
48 | 199 |
Saw in Louisiana a LiveOak Growing | 202 |
The WoundDresser | 215 |
Herman Melville 18191891 | 228 |
Frances E W Harper 18251911 | 241 |
A narrow fellow in the grass | 254 |
A Caged Bird | 267 |
Edgar Lee Masters 18681950 | 274 |
Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes | 287 |
The Departure | 301 |
Nothing Gold Can Stay | 312 |
Wallace Stevens 18791955 | 326 |
To an Old Philosopher in Rome | 339 |
Sara Teasdale 18841933 | 352 |
Ezra Pound 18851972 | 354 |
And then went down to the ship | 360 |
The Shrine | 366 |
Shine Perishing Republic | 373 |
Malediction upon Myself | 379 |
The SteepleJack | 391 |
The Snakes of September | 495 |
My Papas Waltz | 508 |
Josephine Miles 19111985 | 516 |
Robert Hayden 19131980 | 530 |
John Berryman 19141972 | 544 |
Robert Lowell 19171977 | 554 |
Notes from the Childhood and the Girlhood | 567 |
Richard Wilbur 1921 | 580 |
Denise Levertov 1923 | 596 |
Chez Jane | 610 |
Allen Ginsberg 1926 | 623 |
William S Merwin 1927 | 636 |
Galway Kinnell 1927 | 637 |
Angel Butcher | 650 |
Robert Pack 1929 | 663 |
Axe Handles | 673 |
Mark Strand 1934 | 686 |
California Spring | 699 |
Against Whatever It Is Thats Encroaching | 702 |
Robert Hass 1941 | 715 |
Acknowledgments | 729 |
53 | 741 |
Index of Titles and First Lines | 745 |
748 | |
755 | |
Common terms and phrases
Annabel Lee Anne Sexton beauty bird blood bloom blue breast breath bright cloud Copyright dark dead death Donald Justice door doth dream E. E. Cummings earth eyes Ezra Pound face fall feel feet fire flower grass grave gray green hair hand hath head hear heard heart heaven hills land Langston Hughes Laura Riding Jackson leaves light living look Louise Glück lovah's lane Marianne Moore moon morning mountains never night o'er pale pass Poems poetry poets rain rise river Robert Frost Robert Lowell round shade shadow shining shore silent sing sleep smile snow song Song of Hiawatha soul sound stars stone stream summer sweet T. S. Eliot tears thee thine things thou thought town trees turn voice walk waves weary wild wind wings winter wood words