The New Anthology of American Poetry: Traditions and Revolutions, Beginnings to 1900

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Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, Thomas Travisano
Rutgers University Press, 2003 - 736 pages

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.

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Contents

GASPAR PEREZ DE VILLAGRA 15551620
32
ANNE BRADSTREET ca 16121672
42
MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH 16311705
67
EDWARD TAYLOR ca 16421729
75
from Gods Determinations
86
LUCY TERRY ca 17301821 Bars Fight
94
PHILIP FRENEAU 17521832
95
PHILLIS WHEATLEY ca 17531784
104
ALICE CARY 18201871
469
FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN 18211873
471
PHOEBE CARY 18241871
477
MARIA WHITE LOWELL 18271853
497
ROSE TERRY COOKE 18271892
504
JOHN ROLLIN RIDGE 18271867
516
Jinshan Fu XingSong of the Wife of a Gold Mountain Man
524
LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY
533

JOEL BARLOW 17541812
115
SONGS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND NEW NATION
121
EARLY TO MIDNINETEENTH CENTURY
137
NATIVEAMERICAN SONGS RITUAL POETRY
147
Song of the Earth navajo
153
LYDIA HOWARD HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY 17911865
159
GEORGE MOSES HORTON ca 17971883
173
PROSE
202
Letter to Walt Whitman
219
Prologue
235
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 18071892
259
EDGAR ALLAN POE 18091849
294
PROSE
320
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 18091894
329
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 18091865
341
FRANCES SARGENT LOCKE OSGOOD 18111850
350
ADA SARAH LOUISA FORTEN ca 18141898
355
JULIA WARD HOWE 18191910
363
OTHER POEMS
374
WALT WHITMAN 18191892
380
ZARAGOZA CLUBS 1860s
540
DEWITT CLINTON DUNCAN TOOQUASTEE 18291909
542
EMILY DICKINSON 18301886
548
could not stop for death
567
Volcanoes be in Sicily
580
ADAH ISAACS MENKEN ca 18351868
589
B PIATT 18361919
595
LYDIA KAMAKAEHA QUEEN LILIUOKALANI 18381917
605
SIDNEY LANIER 18421881
617
SARAH ORNE JEWETT 18491909
631
EDWIN MARKHAM 18521940
646
MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA 18651954
663
EDGAR LEE MASTERS 18681950
676
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 18691910
685
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 18691935
693
STEPHEN CRANE 18711900
706
Do not weep maiden for war is kind
710
About the Editors
729
Copyright

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Page 306 - Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling. By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!
Page 304 - In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago...
Page 325 - thing of evil— prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore, Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore: Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!
Page 304 - Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow — (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day...
Page 164 - Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image.
Page 319 - A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee ; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.
Page 330 - AY, tear her tattered ensign down ! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar; — The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck once red with heroes...
Page 235 - THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
Page 233 - And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.
Page 305 - Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and. curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. " "Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more.

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