The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry

by Jay Parini

Overview

In the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville suggested that the poetry of the new American democratic state, free from the staggering weight of centuries of European aristocracy and tradition, would focus on "man alone... his passions, his doubts, his rare properties and inconceivable wretchedness."

For hundreds of years, American poets have presented their various images of the land and its people. But what is "American poetry?" Is there truly such a thing as an American poetic tradition, spanning over nearly four centuries from colonial times to the turn of the millennium? In The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, Jay Parini, a respected American poet and critic in his own right, offers an authoritative survey of the elusive category that is the poetry of the American people.

The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry covers all of the canonical American poets, from the colonial to the contemporary-Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Adrienne Rich are all included.

But Parini has also selected a broad sampling of poetry from voices that have been heard as widely over the years. Here, for the first time, is a thorough collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry by women, Native American, and African Americans. Within these pages readers will find the many different traditions that make up the expansive collage of American poetry. Here are the Transcendentalists-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau; and the Imagists-William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, H.D., and Carl Sandburg.

Readers will discover also the early twentieth-century movement of African-American poetic expression, known as the Harlem Renaissance-James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Langston Hughes are all solidly represented in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry.

Jay Parini's introduction deftly guides us into the rich tradition of poetry in our country. Whether in search of a well-known classic or a poem that is not yet considered part of the American poetic tradition, readers will find much to enjoy in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231081221
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	06/01/1995
Pages:	757
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JAY PARINI is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. A former Guggenheim Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford, Parini has written three volumes of poetry, four novels, a critical evaluation of Theodore Roethke's work, and a biography of John Steinbeck. He has written for The Columbia Literary History of the United States, and edited Gore Vidal: A Retrospective and The Columbia History of American Poetry, all published by Columbia University Press.

Table of Contents

IntroductionAnne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
Contemplations
Before the Birth of One of her Children
To my Dear and Loving Husband
The Author to Her Book
In Memory of my Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet
On my Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet
Her Follow some Verses upon the Burning of our House
As Wear PilgrimMichael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)
From the Day of DoomEdward Taylor (1642? - 1729)
Let by Rain
The Reflexion
Meditation 8 (first series) ("I kenning through astronomy divine")
Meditation 150 (second series) ("My Blessed Lord, how doth thy beautious spouse")
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
Huswifery
Upon Wedlock, and Death of ChildrenPhilip Freneau (1752-1832)
On the Emigration to America
The Wild Honey Suckle
The Indian Burying Ground
On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man
To an Author
On Observing a Large Red-Streak ApplePhillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
On Being Brought from Africa to America
On the Death of Rev. Mr. George Whitefield
Thoughts on the Works of Providence
To S.M., a young African Painter, On Seeing his WorksJoel Barlow (1754-1812)
Advice to a Raven in RussiaRichard Henry Wilde (1789-1847)
The Lament of the CaptiveLydia Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865)
Indian Names
The Stars
To the First Slave ShipWilliam Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
To Cole, the Painter, Departing from Europe
A Winter Piece
The Prairies
Thanatopsis
To a Waterfowl
The African ChiefJames Gates Percival (1795-1856)
The Coral GroveLydia Maria Child (1802-1880)
The New England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving DaySarah Helen Whitman (1803-1878)
The Morning-Glory
A November LandscapeRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Each and All
Sea Shore
Ode ("Though loath to grieve")
Give all to Love
Thine Eyes Still Shined
Concord Hymn
Brahma
From the River
DaysElizabeth Oakes-Smith (1806-1893)
Ode to SapphoJohn Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
To my old Schoolmaster
Telling the Bees
Barbara Frietchie
Snow-BoundHenry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
From The Song of Hiawatha (Introduction)
Mezzo Cammin
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
The Cross of Snow
Seaweed
Afternoon in February
The Arrow and the Song
Paul Revere's RideLucretia Davidson (1808-1825)
AmericaOliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
The Chambered NautilusEdgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
To Helen
The City in the Sea
Sonnet-Silence
The Raven
El Dorado
For Annie
Annabel LeeFrances Sargent Osgood (1811-1850)
Woman
Ellen Learning to Walk
Ah! Woman StillChristopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892)
Cnosis
The Pines and the SeaJones Very (1817-1862)
The Columbine
I was sick and in Prison
The Lament of the Flowers
Nature
The Sumach LeavesHenry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Inspiration
I am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied
Light-Winged Smoke, Icarian Bird
Within the Circuit of this Plodding LifeWilliam Ellery Channing (1818-1901)
From a Poet's HopeJames Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
To the DandelionWalt Whitman (1819-1892)
One's Self I Sing
From Song of Myself
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
As Adam early in the Morning
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night
The Wound-Dresser
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
A Noiseless Patient SpiderJulia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
The Portent
The March Into Virginia
A Utalitarian View of the Monitor's Fight
Shiloh
Malvern Hill
The Martyr
The Maldive Shark
The Berg
ArtAlice Cary (1820-1871)
The Sea-Side CaveFrederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
Sonnet ("The starry flower, the flower-like stars that fade")
Sonnet ("And so, as this great sphere")
The QuestionFrances E.W. Harper (1825-1911)
The Slave Auction
Bury Me in a Free Land
The Slave MotherHenry Timrod (1828-1867)
Charleston
Ode ("Sleep Sweetly in your Humble Graves")Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
"Success is Counted Sweetest"
"A Wounded deer leaps highest"
"I felt a funderal in my brain"
"There's a certain slant of light"
"I can wade grief"
"Pain has an element of blank"
"A bird came down the walk"
"He fumbles at your spirit"
"I heard a fly buzz when I died"
"I started early, took my dog"
"Because I could not stop for death"
"A narrow fellow in the grass"
"The last night that she lived"
"My life closed twice before its close"
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
My Lighthouses
Poppies on the WheatSidney Lanier (1842-1881)
Song of the Chattahoochee
A Ballad of Trees and the Master
CloverSarah Orne Jewett (1849-1887)
At Home from Church
A Country Boy in Winter
A Caged BirdEmma Lazarus (1849-1887)
The New Ezekiel
SouthLouise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920)
The Wild Ride
When on the Marge of EveningEdgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
The Hill
Petit, the Poet
The Lost OrchardEdwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
John Evereldown
Richard Cory
Miniver Cheevy
Mr. Flood's PartyStephen Crane (1871-1900)
From The Black Riders (In the Desert)James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Oh Black and Unknown BardsPaul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
A Negro Love Song
Ere SLeep Comes Down to Sooth the Weary Eyes
Ships that Pass in the Night
Lover's Lane
The Debt
The Haunted OakTrumbull Stickney (1874-1904)
Age in Youth
Pity
Requiescam
Quiet after the Rain of Morning
In the Past
In Ampezzo
The DepartureAmy Lowell (1874-1925)
Meeting-House Hill
Music
ChinoiseriesRobert Frost (1874-1963)
Storm fear
Mowing
Home Burial
The Wood-Pile
Fire and Ice
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Spring Pools
Design
The Gift Outright
The Silken Tent
"Out, Out-"
The Subverted Flower
DirectiveCarl Sandburg (1878-1967)
The Harbour
Chicago
Languages
Bas-Relief
Cool Tombs
GrassVachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
General William Booth Entern into HeavenWallace Stevens (1879-1955)
The Snow Man
Nomad Exquisite
Of Modern Poetry
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Sunday Morning
Ancedote of A Jar
The Idea of Order at Key West
From Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction (it must be abstract)
To an Old Philosopher in Rome
Final Soliloquy of the Interior ParamourWilliam Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Woman Walking
It is a Small Plant
To a Poor Old Woman
The Sadness of the Sea
Spring and all
The Red Wheelbarrow
The Young Housewife
To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven
Mists over the River
From Paterson (The Falls)Sarah Teasdale (1884-1933)
Open Windows
Over the RoofsEzra Pound (1885-1972)
Sestma: Altaforte
The Virginal
The Return
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
A Pact
In a Station of the Metro
From Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1: "The tea-rose tea-grown, etc.")
(2: "These fought in any way")
Canto I ("And then went down to the ship")
Canto XLV ("With Usura")"H.D." (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)
Pear Tree
Oread
At Ithaca
The Shrine
Helen
At BaiaRobinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
To the Stone-Cutters
Night
Shine, Perishing Republic
Hurt Hawks
Rock and Hawk
But I am Growing Old and IndolentElinor Wylie (1887-1928)
Wild Peaches
Let no Chantable Hope
Malediction Upon Myself
CastilianMarianne Moore (1887-1972)
The Fish
Poetry
Marriage
The Steeple-Jack
In Distrust of Merits
When I Buy PicturesJohn Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
Bells for John Ehiteside's Daughter
Piazza Piece
Blue Girls
Janet WakingT.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Gerontion
The Waste LandConrad Aiken (1889-1973)
Dear Uncle Stranger
Hatteras Calling
SolitaireClaude McKay (1890-1948)
The Lynching
If We Must Die
Harlem ShadowsArchibald MacLeish (1892-1983)
Ars Poetica
You, Andrew MarvellEdna St.Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Renascence
From: Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree (1:"So she came back into his house again")
The Buck in the Snow
From: Fatal Interview (36: "Hearing a word, and not a word among them")
Ragged IslandCharles Reznikoff (1894-1976)
From: TestimonyJean Toomer (1894-1967)
Reapers
November Cotton Flowere.e.cummings (1894-1962)
"you shall above all things be glad and young"
"anyone lived in a pretty how town"
"i sing of Okaf glad and big"
"my father moved through dooms of love"Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
Winter Swan
Men Loved Wholly beyond Wisdom
M., SingingMelvin Beanearus Tolson (1898-1966)
African China
Dark SymphonyHart Crane (1899-1932)
Repose of Rivers
Voyages
From: The Bridge (To Brooklyn Bridge)
To Emily Dickinson
Ther Broken TowerLeonie Adams (1899-1988)
Lght at Equinox
April MortallityAllen Tate (1899-1979)
Ode to the Confederate Dead
Mr. PopeYvor Winters (1900-1968)
Summer Noon: 1941
The Slow Pacific SwellLaura Riding Jackson (1901-1991)
Prisms
Helen's Burning
All Things he World and I
Nothing so FarGwendolyn B. Bennett (1902-1981)
To a Dark Girl
Heritage
HatredLangston Hughes (1902-1967)
The Weary Blues
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Jazzonia
Cross
Po' Boy Blues
Esthete in Harlem
As I grew Older
Theme for English BArna Bontemps (1902-1973)
A Black Man Talks Reaping
Nocturne of the Wharves
Blight
God Give to MenCountee Cullen (1903-1946)
Heritage
From the Dark Tower
Timed LoverLous Zukofsky (1904-1978)
"A"-11 ("River that must turn full after I stop dying")Richard Eberhart (1904-)
For a Lamb
Ther Fury of Aerial Bombardment
A Loon CallStanley Kunitz (1905-)
The Science of the Night
The Snakes of SeptemberRobert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
Bearded Oaks
Blow, West Wind
Evenig Hawk
Heart of Autumn
Amazing Grace in the BAck Country
What Voice at Moth-Hour
Vermont Ballad: Change of SeasonTheodore Roethke (1908-1963)
Cuttings ("Sticks-in-a-drowse droop over sugary loam")
Cuttings (Later) ("This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks")
Root Cellar
Orchids
Big Wind
My Papa's Waltz
Elegy for Jane
The Far FieldCharles Olson (1910-1970)
From: The Maximus Poems, Book III (Poem 143: The Festival Apect)Josephine Miles (1911-1985)
Belief
Conception
AlbumElizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Seascape
A Cold Spring
The Map
Little Exercise
In the Waiting Room
The Armadillo
Questions of TravelMuriel Rukeyser (1912-1980)
Iris
Then I Saw What the Calling WasRobert Hayden (1913-1980)
Night, Death, Mississippi
A Road in Kentucky
Those Winter Sundays
Middle PassageDelmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With MeWilliam Stafford (1914-1993)
Traveling through the Dark
The Rescued Year
At the Bomb Testing SiteJohn Berryman (1914-1972)
From: Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
From: The Dream Songs (1. "Huffy Henry hid the day")
(4. "Filling her compact and delicious body')
(5. "Henry sats in de bar & was odd")
(14. "Life, friends, is boring")
Henry's FateRandall Jarell (1914-1965)
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
The Knight, Death, and the Devil
The Woman at the Washington ZooRobert Lowell (1917-1977)
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
Mr. Edwards and the Spider
Grandparents
Man and Wife
Skunk Hour
For the Union Dead
HistoryGwendolyn Brooks (1917- )
Negro Hero
Notes from the Childhood and the Girlhood
Jessie Mitchell's Mother
Of Robert Frost
Langston HughesRobert Duncan (1919-1988)
Often I Am Permitted to Return to Meadow
Passage over WaterHoward Nemerov (1920-1991)
Blue Suburban
The Western Approaches
The War in the AirAmy Clampitt (1920-1994)
A Baroque SunburstMona Van Duyn (1921- )
Moose in the Morning. Northern MaineRichard Wilbur (1921- )
A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra
Still, Citizen Sparrow
Love Calls Us to the Things of this World
MindJames Dickey (1923- )
The Heaven of Animals
The Dusk of Horses
Cherrylog RoadAnthony Hecht (1923- )
Jason
The Gardens of the Villa D'EsteGalway Kinnell (1927- )
The Bear
After Making Love We Hear footstepsJames Wright (1927-1980)
Sparrwos in a Hillside Drift
Milkweed
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Lying in a Hammock at Wiliam Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Beginning Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Music Swims Back to Me
The Truth the Dead Know
The Starry Night
Wanting to DiePeter Davison (1928- )
Cross CutPhilip Levine (1928- )
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
Angel Butcher
Later Still
Bell Isle, 1949
Snow
BeliefJohn Hollander (1929- )
The Great Bear
Morning in the Islands
The Mad PotterRobert Pack (1929- )
The Trasher in the Willow by the Lake
Proton DecayAdrienne Rich (1929- )
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
In the Evening
Diving into the Wreck
Power
Integrity
Tattered KaddishGary Snyder (1930- )
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Axel Handles
The Snow on Saddle MountainSylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Morning Song
Dadd
Fever 103"
AnelAnne Stevenson (1933- )
The Spirit Is Too Blunt an Instrument
In the OrchardImamu Amiri Baraka (1934 - )
Return of the Native
LegacyMark Strand (1934- )
The Kite
The Garden
Shooting WhalesN.Scoot Momaday (1934-1992)
Carners of the Dream Whell
Winter Holding odf the Coast of North AmericaAudre Lorde (1935- )
The Night-blooming JasmineMary Oliver (1935- )
Some Questios You Might Ask
When Death ComesCharles Wright (1935- )
Virgo Descending
Snow
Stone Canyon Nocturne
Sitting at Night on the Front Porch
Porstriat of the Artist with La Po
California SpringNancy Williard (1936- )
Angels in WinterCharles Simic (1838- )
Fork
Against Whatever It is That's Encroaching
Ancient Autumn
Clouds GatheringRobert Pinsky (1940- )
First Early Mornings Together
Serpent Knowledge
The Questions
ShirtErica Jong (1941- )
The Buddha in the WombRobert Hass (1941- )
Meditation at LagunitasSimon J. Ortiz (1941- )
The Creation: According to Coyote
The Serenity in StonesDave Smith (1942- )
The Roundhouse Voices
August, on the Rented FarmMarilyn Hacker (1942- )
Rondeau after a Transatlantic Telephone CallJames Tate (1942- )
The Lost PilotLouise Glueck (1943- )
The Pond
The School Children
Messengers
Mount Ararat
The Wild IrisAcknowledgments
Index of Authors
Index of Titles and First Lines

What People are Saying About This

Catharine R. Stimpson

Like poetry or dislike it, use and enjoy the new Columbia History of American Poetry. There are riches here for all intellects and imaginations.

— Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University

Editorial Reviews

The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry interrogates the poetic tradition of the United States and dismantles it in a manner that encourages readers to reassemble that tradition in new and provocative ways.

New York Times Book Review

Rich in pleasures . . . In a bright-indeed, brilliant-introduction, Parini supplies a whirlwind tour of American poetry.

Harvard Review

Like poetry or dislike it, use and enjoy the new Columbia History of American Poetry. There are riches here for all intellects and imaginations.

Catharine R. Stimpson

The recent torrent of specialized anthologies spotlighting individual styles, ethnicities, periods, and themes argues for at least one new omnibus that embraces the 400-year spectrum of American poetry with ecumenism. Ranging from Anne Bradstreet to Louise Glck, editor Parini aims to represent "the main schools of poetry that have co-existed in the United States...in proportion to their influence," including more poetry by women and minorities "than one generally finds" in older anthologies. One grants him the latter assertion prima facie-pieces by neglected poets like Lone Adams and Claude McKay are welcome-but the former claim, vague as it is, invites debate, especially since the 20th-century selections seem unduly constrained by a bland, university-press conservatism. How else can one explain the presence of academic contemporaries Dave Smith and Robert Pack at the expense of important avant-garde influences such as George Oppen and William Everson? Or accept Anne Stevenson in the absence of Barbara Guest? The familiar essentials aside, such questionable inclusions and omissions render American poetry in a dimmer light than it deserves. Recommended for large collections only.-Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.

Library Journal

To the canonical poets, from the colonial to the contemporary, Parini has added a welcome collection of 19th- and 20th-century poetry by women, Native Americans, and African Americans (including a solid representation of the Harlem Renaissance). Cavils will no doubt follow from the narrow-minded and the mean-spirited, but this is the anthology to own in our time. Essential for every collection. (RC) Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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