Poems for America

by Carmela Ciuraru (Editor)

Overview

An inspiring anthology that celebrates our nation with more than one hundred of the greatest poems ever written about the landscapes, institutions, and transforming events of America.

This remarkable volume commemorates our country's struggles and triumphs with poems chronicling the American experience in all its vastness, from the late seventeenth century through the present day. Alongside poems about New York, Florida, and California are descriptions of railroads, amusement parks, hotels, and road trips; scenes of rural and western life; vivid descriptions of our grandest cities; and poems that illuminate the complexity of the most shameful chapters in U.S. history, such as slavery and the oppression of Native Americans. Taken together, these poems -- whether voices of celebration or dissent -- honor the astonishing and enduring spirit of our nation.

Here are classics such as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," and "Paul Revere's Ride"; works by American masters, including Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, and Elizabeth Bishop; and lesser-known gems by important American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway's "I Like Americans" and Henry David Thoreau's "Our Country." Also featured are poems by contemporary talents, including Richard Wilbur, Philip Levine, Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, and Sherman Alexie. A timeless volume that traces the history of the United States through verse, Poems for America is essential for poetry lovers and for anyone who appreciates the rich and fascinating story of our nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416595656
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	11/01/2007
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	380 KB

About the Author

Carmela Ciuraru is the editor of the anthologies First Loves and Beat Poets. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY CARMELA CIURARU

Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672): "Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666. Copied Out of a Loose Paper"

Philip Freneau (1752-1832): "The Indian Burying Ground"

Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784): "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North America, &c."

"To a Lady on Her Remarkable Preservation in an Hurricane in North Carolina"

Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865): "The Indian's Welcome to the Pilgrim Fathers"

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): Excerpt, "The Prairies"

George Moses Horton (c.1797-c.1883): "On Liberty and Slavery"

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880): "The New-England Boy's Song About Thanksgiving Day"

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): "Concord Hymn"

"Boston Hymn"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882): "Paul Revere's Ride"

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892): "Barbara Frietchie"

Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895): "America"

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894): "Old Ironsides"

Jones Very (1813-1880): "The First Atlantic Telegraph"

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): "Our Country"

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): "An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876"

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910): "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

Walt Whitman (1819-1892): "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

"City of Orgies"

"A Promise to California"

"I Hear America Singing"

Herman Melville (1819-1891): "Ball's Bluff"

James Monroe Whitfield (1822-1871): "America"

Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911): "The Slave Mother"

"Learning to Read"

Henry Timrod (1828-1867): "Ode Sung at Magnolia Cemetery"

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886): #389 [There's been a Death, in the Opposite House,"]

#617 ["Don't put up my Thread and Needle -"]

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909): "At Home from Church"

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887): "Long Island Sound"

"The New Colossus"

James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916): Excerpt, "The Old Swimmin'-Hole"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935): "The Anti-Suffragists"

Frank Bird Linderman (1869-1938): "Cabins"

Stephen Crane (1871-1900): "War Is Kind"

Amy Lowell (1874-1925): "Thompson's Lunch Room -- Grand Central Station"

Arthur Chapman (1874-1935): "The Dude Ranch"

Robert Frost (1874-1963): "After Apple-Picking"

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson (1875-1935): "I Sit and Sew"

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967): "Work Gangs"

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes"

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955): "Fabliau of Florida"

"Anecdote of the Jar"

Badger Clark Jr. (1883-1957): "The Legend of Boastful Bill"

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): "The Forgotten City"

Marianne Moore (1887-1972): "Old Amusement Park"

"Love in America -- "

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965): "The Boston Evening Transcript"

Claude McKay (1890-1948): "Dawn in New York"

John Peale Bishop (1892-1944): "O Pioneers!"

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950): "From a Train Window"

Genevieve Taggard (1894-1948): "American Farm, 1934"

H. L. Davis (1894-1960): "Proud Riders"

e. e. cummings (1894-1962): "'next to of course god america i"

"THANKSGIVING (1956)"

Hart Crane (1899-1932): "To Brooklyn Bridge"

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961): "I Like Americans"

Yvor Winters (1900-1968): "In Praise of California Wines"

Langston Hughes (1902-1967): "We're All in the Telephone Book"

Helene Johnson (1907-1995): "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem"

George Oppen (1908-1984): "Product"

"California"

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979): "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore"

"Florida"

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): "Tract"

"The Campaign"

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980): Excerpt, "The Outer Banks"

"Despisals"

John Berryman (1914-1972): "American Lights, Seen from off Abroad"

Margaret Walker (1915-1998): "Southern Song"

Robert Lowell (1917-1977): "The Mouth of the Hudson"

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000): "We Real Cool"

May Swenson (1919-1989): "Bronco Busting, Event #1"

"Bison Crossing Near Mt. Rushmore"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-): "The Changing Light"

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994): "vegas"

Hayden Carruth (1921-): "In Georgetown"

Marie Ponsot (1921-): "Pleasant Avenue"

Richard Wilbur (1921-): "Wellfleet: The House"

James Schuyler (1923-1991): "April and Its Forsythia"

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986): "Bagel Shop Jazz"

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966): "Music"

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997): "America"

A. R. Ammons (1926-2001): "First Carolina Said-Song"

Robert Bly (1926-): "Sleet Storm on the Merritt Parkway"

Anne Sexton (1928-1974): "And One for My Dame"

Donald Hall (1928-): "Transcontinent"

"Tomorrow"

Philip Levine (1928-): "Belle Isle, 1949"

Adrienne Rich (1929-): "Prospective Immigrants Please Note"

Excerpt, "From an Old House in America"

Gary Snyder (1930-): "All over the Dry Grasses"

Audre Lorde (1934-1992): "Every Traveler Has One Vermont Poem"

Sonia Sanchez (1935-): "Listenen to Big Black at S.F. State"

Charles Wright (1935-): "American Twilight"

Lucille Clifton (1936-): "at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989"

Ishmael Reed (1938-): "black power poem"

Michael Dennis Browne (1940-): "Iowa"

William Matthews (1942-1997): "Why We Are Truly a Nation"

Nikki Giovanni (1943-): "Knoxville, Tennessee"

"My Poem"

Wanda Coleman (1946-): "Today I Am a Homicide in the North of the City"

Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946-): "Walking Back Up Depot Street"

Jane Kenyon (1947-1995): "At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, South Carolina"

"The Way Things Are in Franklin"

Reginald Gibbons (1947-): "American Trains"

Yusef Komunyakaa (1947-): "Facing It"

Heather McHugh (1948-): "Language Lesson 1976"

Julia Alvarez (1950-): "Queens, 1963"

Sapphire (1950-): "California Dreamin'"

John Yau (1950-): "The Dream Life of a Coffin Factory in Lynn, Massachusetts"

Robin Becker (1951-): "Community Garden, Sixth Street and Avenue B"

Rita Dove (1952-): "Crab-Boil"

"Silos"

Ray Gonzalez (1952-): "I Hear the Bells of the Ice-Cream Vendor Outside My Door"

Mark Doty (1953-): "Adonis Theater"

Dave Alvin (1955-): "Spiderman Versus the Kachinas"

Kimiko Hahn (1955-): "The Hula Skirt, 1959"

Barbara Kingsolver (1955-): "What the Janitor Heard in the Elevator"

David Woo (1959-): "Eden"

Elizabeth Alexander (1962-): "Boston Year"

Campbell McGrath (1962-): "Capitalist Poem #5"

Sherman Alexie (1966-): "At the Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School"

AFTERWORD: Edward Sanders (1939-): Excerpt, "Introduction"

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF POEM TITLES

INDEX OF POETS

PERMISSIONS