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

When completed, this three-volume anthology will be the most balanced, inclusive, and comprehensive anthology of American poetry ever published. The New Anthology of American Poetry is designed to become the standard text for college courses in American poetry, and it will also appeal to general readers who wish to explore the range and diversity of this literary form.

The series demonstrates how a succession of canons of American poetry have evolved, with certain poets silenced until the present day, while others who emerged and then faded are now ready to be retrieved. Readers will find more attention devoted to women poets and to artists from African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American cultures than in any previous anthology. Readers will also encounter an extremely solid presentation of long-established writers. The anthology offers not just a unique and teachable selection of poets and poems, but also concise introductions to periods and styles, brief bibliographies of key primary and secondary texts, and critical selections on the art of poetry by the anthologized poets themselves.

VOLUME I: Traditions and Revolutions, Beginnings to 1900

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.