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Excerpts

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

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