List of illustrations
Preface
AN AGE OF EXPANSION, 1865-1910From Romanticism to Realism Regionalism The Gilded Age Timeline: An Age of Expansion NEW VOICES IN POETRYWALT WHITMAN (1819–1892) Song of Myself I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer Cavalry Crossing a Ford When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd To a Common Prostitute A Noiseless Patient Spider EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) 49 [I never lost as much but twice] 67 [Success is counted sweetest] 130 [These are the days when Birds come back—] 214 [I taste a liquor never brewed—] 241 [I like a look of Agony] 249 [Wild Nights—Wild Nights!] 252 [I can wade Grief—] 258 [There's a certain Slant of light] 280 [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain] 285 [The Robin's my Criterion for Tune—] 288 [I'm Nobody! Who are you?] 290 [Of Bronze—and Blaze—] 303 [The Soul selects her own Society—] 320 [We play at Paste—] 324 [Some keep the Sabbath going to Church] 328 [A Bird came down the Walk—] 341 [After great pain, a formal feeling comes—] 376 [Of Course—I prayed—] 401 [What Soft—Cherubic Creatures—] 435 [Much Madness is divinest Sense—] 441 [This is my letter to the World] 448 [This was a Poet—It is That] 449 [I died for Beauty—but was scarce] 465 [I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—] 511 [If you were coming in the Fall] 556 [The Brain, within its Groove] 579 [I had been hungry, all the Years—]585 [I like to see it lap the Miles—] 632 [The Brain—is wider than the Sky—] 636 [The Way I read a Letter's—this—] 640 [I cannot live with You—] 650 [Pain—has a Element of Blank—] 657 [I dwell in Possibility—] 712 [Because I could not stop for Death—] 732 [She rose to His Requirement—dropt] 754 [My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—] 816 [A Death blow is a Life blow to Some] 823 [Not what We did, shall be the test] 986 [A narrow Fellow in the Grass] 1052 [I never saw a Moor—] 1078 [The Bustle in a House] 1082 [Revolution is the Pod] 1100 [The last Night that She lived] 1129 [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—] 1207 [He preached upon "Breadth" till it argued him narrow—] 1263 [There is no Frigate like a Book] 1304 [Not with a Club, the Heart is broken] 1463 [A Route of Evanescence] 1540 [As imperceptibly as Grief] 1587 [He ate and drank the precious Words—] 1624 [Apparently with no surprise] 1732 [My life closed twice before its close—] 1760 [Elysium is as far as to]
CROSSCURRENTS: Freedom in the Gilded Age WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892) From Democratic Vistas HENRY ADAMS (1838–1918) From The Education of Henry AdamsChapter XVII: President Grant (1869) GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE (1844–1915) From The Freedman’s Case in Equity [The Perpetual Alien] BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856–1915) From Up from Slavery The Struggle for an Education
REALISM AND NATURALISM, 1880–1920RealismSpiritual Unrest Naturalism Timeline: The Turn of the Century LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-1888) From Little Women Playing Pilgrims A Merry Christmas The Laurence Boy MARK TWAIN (1835-1910) The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County From Roughing It [When the Buffalo Climbed a Tree] From Life on the Mississippi The Boys' Ambition [A Mississippi Cub-Pilot] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn How to Tell a Story The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837-1920) From Criticism and Fiction Chapter II [The True Standard of the Arts] Chapter XIII [How Can an Art Decay?] Chapter XXI [American and Old World Novelists] Chapter XXIV [The Prudishness of the Anglo-Saxon Novel] Editha HENRY JAMES (1843-1916) Daisy Miller The Real Thing The Beast in the Jungle The Art of Fiction BRET HARTE (1836-1902) The Outcasts of Poker Flat RED CLOUD (c. 1822-1909) [All I Want Is Peace and Justice] SARAH WINNEMUCCA HOPKINS (1844-1891) From Life among the Piutes Chapter 1: First Meeting of Piutes and Whites AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914?) *ChickamaugaGEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE (1844-1925) Belles Demoiselles Plantation JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (1848-1908) The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story Mr. Rabbit Finds His Match at Last HENRY ADAMS (1838-1918) The Dynamo and the Virgin SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909) A White Heron KATE CHOPIN (1851-1904) The Story of an Hour The Awakening MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN (1852-1930) The Revolt of "Mother" CHARLES W. CHESNUTT (1858-1932) The Passing of Grandison ABRAHAM CAHAN *A Ghetto Wedding
CROSSCURRENTS: Prosperity and Social Justice at the Turn of the Century ANDREW CARNEGIE (1835–1919) From Wealth STEPHEN CRANE (1871–1900) The Trees in the Garden Rained Flowers WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY (1869–1910) Gloucester Moors On Soldier Fallen in the Philippines ZITKALA-SA (1876–1938) Retrospection W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868–1963) From The Souls of Black Folk Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
HAMLIN GARLAND (1860-1940) Under the Lion's Paw CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) The Yellow Wallpaper FRANK NORRIS (1870-1902) A Plea for Romantic Fiction STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900) A God in Wrath Once I Saw Mountains Angry A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky God Lay Dead in Heaven Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War Is Kind The Wayfarer A Man Said to the Universe Maggie: A Girl of the Streets The Open Boat PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (1872-1906) We Wear the Mask A Death Song Life's Tragedy At the Tavern Sympathy EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937) The Muse's Tragedy Roman Fever THEODORE DREISER (1871-1945) The Second Choice EDITH MAUD EATON (SUI SIN FAR) (1865–1914) In the Land of the Free JACK LONDON (1876-1916) To Build a Fire
LITERARY RENAISSANCE, 1910-1930Twentieth-Century Renaissance Poetry between the Wars Timeline: Literary Renaissance NEW DIRECTIONS: THE FIRST WAVEEDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935)Luke Havergal The House on the Hill Richard Cory Miniver Cheevy Eros Turannos Mr. Flood's Party The Mill Firelight New England WILLA CATHER (1873-1947) Neighbour Rosicky ELLEN GLASGOW (1873-1945) Jordan's End GERTRUDE STEIN (1873-1945)From Tender ButtonsFrom The Making of AmericansJOHN MILTON OSKISON (1874–1947) The Problem with Old Harjo EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868-1950) Petit, the Poet Elsa Wertman Hamilton Greene Carl Hamblin Lucinda Matlock Davis Matlock ROBERT FROST (1874-1946) The Tuft of Flowers Mending Wall The Death of the Hired Man Home Burial After Apple-Picking The Wood-Pile The Road Not Taken The Oven Bird Birches The Hill Wife The Ax-Helve Fire and Ice Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Desert Places Design Come In Directive CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967) *ChicagoFog Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard Gone A Fence Grass Southern Pacific WasherwomanSHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876-1941) The Book of the Grotesque Adventure SUSAN GLASPELL (1876?-1948) Trifles EZRA POUND (1885-1972) The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter From A Pact In a Station of the Metro Hugh Selwyn Mauberley From The Cantos I: [And then went down to the ship] XIII: [Kung walked] From LXXXI: [What thou lovest well remains] CXVI: [Came Neptunus] T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Gerontion The Waste Land The Hollow Men AMY LOWELL (1874-1925) Patterns A Decade Meeting-House Hill ELINOR WYLIE (1885-1928) Wild Peaches Sanctuary Prophecy Let No Charitable Hope O Virtuous Light H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886-1961) Heat Heliodora Lethe Sigil POETS OF IDEA AND ORDERWALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955) Peter Quince at the Clavier Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock Sunday Morning Depression before Spring Ploughing on Sunday Anecdote of the Jar The Snow Man Bantams in Pine-Woods A High-Toned Old Christian Woman The Emperor of Ice-Cream To the One of Fictive Music The Idea of Order at Key West A Postcard from the Volcano Of Modern Poetry No Possum, No Sop, No Taters The Plain Sense of Things Of Mere Being WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963) The Young Housewife Tract To Mark Anthony in Heaven Portrait of a Lady Queen-Anne's-Lace The Great Figure Spring and All The Red Wheelbarrow This Is Just to Say A Sort of a Song The Dance The Ivy Crown MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972) Poetry In the Days of Prismatic Color An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish No Swan So Fine The Pangolin The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing In Distrust of Merits A Jelly-Fish JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974) Winter Remembered Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter Blue Girls Antique Harvesters HART CRANE (1899-1932) At Melville's Tomb From The Bridge To Brooklyn Bridge Van WinkleThe River The Tunnel
A LITERATURE OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHALLENGE, 1920-1945Drama between the Wars Primitivism The Roaring Twenties and the Lost Generation The Harlem Renaissance Depression and Totalitarian Menace Timeline: A Literature of Social and Cultural Challenge EUGENE O'NEILL (1888-1953) The Hairy Ape ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887-1962) To the Stone-Cutters Roan Stallion Shine, Perishing Republic Hurt Hawks The Purse-Seine CLAUDE MCKAY (1889-1948) The Harlem Dancer Harlem Shadows America Outcast EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950) First Fig [I Shall Go Back Again to the Bleak Shore] [What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why] [She Had a Horror He Would Die at Night] Justice Denied in Massachusetts [This Beast That Rends Me in the Sight of All] [Since of No Creature Living the Last Breath] [Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat Nor Drink] [Even in the Moment of Our Earliest Kiss] [Those Hours When Happy Hours Were My Estate] [I Will Put Chaos into Fourteen Lines] E. E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962) Thy Fingers Make Early Flowers Of When God Lets My Body Be In Just-Buffalo Bill's My Sweet Old Etcetera I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big If There Are Any Heavens Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town My Father Moved through Dooms of Love Up into the Silence the Green Plato Told When Serpents Bargain for the Right to Squirm I Thank You God
CROSSCURRENTS: The Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871–1938) [Negro Dialect] PAUL ROBESON (1898- 1976) Reflections on O'Neill's Plays LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–1967) When the Negro Was in Vogue ST. JAMES INFIRMARY BLUES
JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967) Karintha Reapers November Cotton Flower COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946) Yet Do I Marvel Heritage For My Grandmother For a Lady I Know LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967) The Negro Speaks of Rivers The Weary Blues Song for a Dark Girl Trumpet Player Dream Boogie Motto Green Memory Harlem F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) Babylon Revisited JOHN DOS PASSOS (1896-1970) From The 42nd Parallel Big Bill From 1919 The House of Morgan The Body of an American From The Big Money Newsreel LXVI The Camera Eye (50) Vag WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962) That Evening Sun Barn Burning ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961)Big Two-Hearted River: Part I Big Two-Hearted River: Part II THOMAS WOLFE (1900-1938)An Angel on the Porch KATHERINE ANNE PORTER (1890-1980) The Jilting of Granny Weatherall ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1891-1960) From Their Eyes Were Watching God [The Yellow Mule] JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) The Chrysanthemums RICHARD WRIGHT (1908-1960) From Black Boy [A Five Dollar Fight] WOODY GUTHRIE (1912-1967) This Land Is Your Land Pastures of Plenty The Sinking of the Reuben James Hard Travelin’ Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1945-1973Postwar Drama Postwar Poetry Postwar Fiction Multiculturalism The Postmodern Impulse Timeline: The Second World War and Its Aftermath DRAMATENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1911-1983) The Glass Menagerie ARTHUR MILLER (1915- ) Death of a Salesman EDWARD ALBEE (1928– ) The American Dream
CROSSCURRENTS: The Age of Anxiety—The Beat Generation and Social ResponsibilitiesJACK KEROUAC*From On the RoadJOHN CLELLON HOLMES (1926–1988) From The Philosophy of the Beat Generation DWIGTH D. EISENHOWER [The Military Industrial Complex]RACHEL CARSONFrom Silent SpringMARTIN LUTHER KING, JR (1929–1968) I Have a DreamPOETRYROBERT PENN WARREN (1905-1989) History among the Rocks Founding Fathers, Nineteenth-Century Style, Southeast U.S.A. Blow, West Wind THEODORE ROETHKE (1908-1963) Open House Cuttings (later) My Papa's Waltz Elegy for Jane The Waking I Knew a Woman The Far Field Wish for a Young Wife In a Dark Time ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) The Fish At the Fishhouses Questions of Travel The Armadillo Sestina In the Waiting Room One Art CZESLAW MILOSZ (1911-2004) Campo dei Fiori Fear Café In Warsaw Ars Poetica? To Raja Rao With HerROBERT HAYDEN (1913–1980) Tour 5 Those Winter Sundays Year of the Child JOHN BERRYMAN (1914-1972) From THE DREAM SONGS: 1 [Huffy Henry hid the day] 4 [Filling her compact & delicious body] 14 [Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so] 29 [There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart] 76 [Henry's Confession] 145 [Also I love him: me he's done no wrong] 153 [I'm cross with god who has wrecked this generation] 384 [The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done] 385 [My daughter's heavier. Light leaves are flying] WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914-1993) Before the Big Storm Judgments One Home The Farm on the Great Plains GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000) a song in the front yard The Bean Eaters We Real Cool The Lovers of the Poor ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977) Sailing Home from Rapallo Waking in the Blue *Memories of West Street and Lepke Skunk Hour The Neo-Classical Urn For the Union Dead For Theodore Roethke Reading Myself Epilogue RICHARD WILBUR (1921- ) The Beautiful Changes Museum Piece The Death of a Toad Love Calls Us to the Things of This World JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997) The Lifeguard Cherrylog Road The Shark's Parlor DENISE LEVERTOV (1923- ) The Third Dimension To the Snake The Room The Willows of Massachusetts Living A. R. AMMONS (1926-2001) Corsons Inlet Cascadilla Falls Poetics ROBERT BLY (1926- ) Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter Watering the Horse The Executive's Death Looking at New-Fallen Snow from a Train ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997) A Supermarket in California Howl America FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966) Why I Am Not a Painter A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island The Day Lady Died Ave Maria SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963) Morning Song The Rival The Arrival of the Bee Box The Applicant Daddy Lady Lazarus Death & Co Child Mystic AMIRI BARAKA (1934- ) In Memory of Radio An Agony As Now BOB DYLAN (1945– ) Blowin’ in the Wind A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall The Times They Are A-Changin’ Mr. Tambourine Man Like a Rolling Stone PROSEEUDORA WELTY (1909-2001) A MemoryVLADIMIR NABOKOV (1899-1977) From Pnin Chapter Five [Pnin at the Pines] ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER (1904-1991) Gimpel the FoolJOHN CHEEVER (1912-1982) The Swimmer RALPH ELLISON (1914- ) From Invisible Man Chapter 1 [Battle Royal] BERNARD MALAMUD (1914-1986) The Mourners SAUL BELLOW (1915- ) A Silver Dish JAMES BALDWIN (1924-1987) Sonny's Blues FLANNERY O'CONNOR (1925-1964) Good Country People JOHN BARTH (1930- ) Lost in the Funhouse JOHN UPDIKE (1932- ) Separating PHILIP ROTH (1933- ) The Conversion of the Jews THOMAS PYNCHON (1937– ) Entropy
A CENTURY ENDS AND A NEW MILLENNIUM BEGINS, 1975-PRESENTDrama Poetry Fiction Multiculturalism GlobalizationTimeline: A Century Ends and a New Millennium Begins DRAMASAM SHEPARD (1943- ) True West AUGUST WILSON (1945– ) Fences
CROSSCURRENTS: What Is an American? Freedom and ResponsibilityBOB DYLAN (1941- )Masters of War NORMAN MAILER (1923-2007)*From Armies of the NightBETTY FRIEDANThe Problem That Has No NameTIM O’BRIEN (1946– ) The Things They Didn’t KnowAL GORE (1948– ) *From An Inconvenient Truth
POETRYW.S. MERWIN (1927- ) The Drunk in the Furnace The Last One Vision Trees JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980) A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio In Terror of Hospital Bills Two Postures beside a Fire JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995) A Timepiece Charles on Fire The Broken Home Samos JOHN ASHBERY (1927- ) Some Trees The Painter Crazy Weather A Prison All the Same The Desperado At North Farm Down by the Station, Early in the Morning ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974) Her Kind The Farmer's Wife The Truth the Dead Know With Mercy for the Greedy ADRIENNE RICH (1929- ) Aunt Jennifer's Tigers Living in Sin Necessities of Life Diving into the Wreck For the Dead For the Record GARY SNYDER (1930- ) The Late Snow & Lumber Strike of the Summer of Fifty-Four Riprap Not Leaving the House Axe Handles MARY OLIVER (1935- ) In Blackwater Woods The Ponds Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957 Early Morning, New Hampshire Yes! No! JAY WRIGHT (1935- ) A Month in the Country Preparing to Leave Home From Boleros35 Indian Pond The Buried Barn's Own Nocturne CHARLES SIMIC (1938- ) Fear Bestairy for the Fingers of My Right Hand Fork Euclid Avenue Prodigy My Weariness of Epic Proportions JOSEPH BRODSKY (1940-1996) From Lullaby of Cape Cod IV [The change of Empires is intimately tied] Belfast Tune A Song To My DaughterSIMON J. ORTIZ (1941- ) Vision Shadows Poems from the Veterans Hospital 8:50 AM Ft. Lyons VAH Travelling From From Sand Creek [At the Salvation Army] RITA DOVE (1952- ) Champagne Ö Dusting Roast Possum LORNA DEE CERVANTES (1954- ) Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe in a War Between the Races For Virginia Chavez Emplumadu CATHY SONG (1955- ) Picture Bride Heaven Immaculate Lives LI-YOUNG LEE (1957– ) I Ask My Mother to Sing The Gift The Hammock Restless PROSEJOYCE CAROL OATES (1938- ) Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? NASH CANDELARIA (1928- ) El Patrón TONI MORRISON (1931- ) From Sula 1922 ANNIE PROULX (1935- ) The Half-Skinned Steer DON DELILLO (1936- ) The Angel Esmeralda RAYMOND CARVER (1938-1988) A Small, Good Thing BOBBIE ANN MASON (1940- ) Shiloh BHARATI MUKHERJEE (1940- ) The Management of GriefANNE TYLER (1941- ) Average Waves in Unprotected Waters JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN (1941- )*Doc’s StoryISABEL ALLENDE (1942- ) And of Clay Are We CreatedALICE WALKER (1944- ) Everyday Use TIM O'BRIEN (1946- ) From Going After Cacciato Night March ANN BEATTIE (1947- ) Janus LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948- ) The Man to Send Rain Clouds JAMAICA KINCAID (1949- ) Mariah AMY TAN (1952- ) Half and Half LOUISE ERDRICH (1954- ) The Red Convertible SANDRA CISNEROS (1954– ) Woman Hollering Creek BARBARA KINGSOLVER (1955- ) Homeland SHERMAN ALEXIE (1966– ) What You Pawn I Will Redeem JHUMPA LAHIRI (1967- ) The Third and Final Continent EDWIDGE DANTICAT (1969– ) Seven Historical-Literary TimelineBibliography Acknowledgments Index
