American poetry 1

American poetryAmerican poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to Englishpoetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies (although before this, astrong oral tradition often likened to poetry existed among Native American societies[1]). Unsurprisingly, most of theearly colonists' work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19thcentury, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman waswinning an enthusiastic audience abroad, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefrontof the English-language avant-garde.This position was sustained into the 20th century to the extent that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the mostinfluential English-language poets in the period during World War I.[2] By the 1960s, the young poets of the BritishPoetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry theywanted to write. Toward the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholarsplaced an increased emphasis on poetry by women, African Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos and other culturalgroupings. Poetry, and creative writing in general, also tended to become more professionalized with the growth ofcreative writing programs in the English studies departments of campuses across the country.

Poetry in the colonies

Phillis Wheatley

As England's contact with the Americas increased after the 1490s,explorers sometimes included verse with their descriptions of the "NewWorld" up through 1650, the year of Anne Bradstreet's "The TenthMuse," which was written in America, most likely in Ipswich,Massachusetts or North Andover, Massachusetts) andprinted/distributed in London, England by her brother-in-law, Rev.John Woodbridge. There are 14 such writers whom we might on thatbasis call American poets (they had actually been to America and todifferent degrees, wrote poems or verses about the place). Earlyexamples include a 1616 "testimonial poem" on the sterling warlikecharacter of Captain John Smith (in Barbour, ed. "Works") and Rev.William Morrell's 1625 "Nova Anglia" or "New England," which is arhymed catalog of everything from American weather to glimpses ofNative women, framed with a thin poetic "conceit" or "fiction"characterizing the country as a "sad and forlorn" female pining forEnglish domination. Then in May 1627 Thomas Morton ofMerrymount---an English West Country outdoorsman, attorney at law, man of letters and colonialadventurer---raised a Maypole to celebrate and foster more success at this fur-trading plantation and nailed up a"Poem" and "Song" (one a densely-literary manifesto on how English and Native people came together there andmust keep doing so for a successful America; the other a light "drinking song" also full of deeper Americanimplications). These were published in book form along with other examples of Morton's American poetry in "NewEnglish Canaan" (1637); and based on the criteria of "First," "American" and Poetry," they make Morton (and notAnne Bradstreet) America's first poet in English. (See Jack Dempsey, ed., "New English Canaan by Thomas Mortonof 'Merrymount'" and his biography "Thomas Morton: The Life & Renaissance of an Early American Poet" ScituateMA: Digital Scanning 2000).

One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), who remains one of the earliest known women poets who wrote in English.[3] The poems she published during her lifetime address religious

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and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, many ofwhich remained unpublished until the 20th century.Edward Taylor (1645–1729) wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style thatcan be seen as typical of the early colonial period.[4]

This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the poetry written in thecolonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The earliest "secular" poetry published in New England was bySamuel Danforth in his "almanacks" for 1647–1649,[5] published at Cambridge; these included "puzzle poems" aswell as poems on caterpillars, pigeons, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as apoet, Danforth never ventured far from a spiritual message.Another distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book "Poems onVarious Subjects, Religious and Moral," was published in 1773. She was one of the best-known poets of her day, atleast in the colonies, and her poems were typical of New England culture at the time, meditating on religious andclassical ideas.[6][7]

The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. This trend is mostevident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832), who is also notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude toNative Americans shown in his writings, sometimes reflective of a skepticism toward Anglo-American culture andcivilization.[8] However, as might be expected from what was essentially provincial writing, this late colonial poetryis generally somewhat old-fashioned in form and syntax, deploying the means and methods of Pope and Gray in theera of Blake and Burns.On the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the coloniesthemselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created thesettlement in the first place. As the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected theirdrive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to beconservative, to say the least. This can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poetsoperated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London.

Postcolonial poetry

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1873.

The first significant poet of the independent United States was WilliamCullen Bryant (1794–1878), whose great contribution was to writerhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies and forests. Other notablepoets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include RalphWaldo Emerson, (1803–1882), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807–1882), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), Edgar Allan Poe(1809–1849), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), Henry DavidThoreau (1817–1862), James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), and SidneyLanier (1842–1881). As might be expected, the works of these writersare united by a common search for a distinctive American voice todistinguish them from their British counterparts. To this end, theyexplored the landscape and traditions of their native country asmaterials for their poetry.[9]

The most significant example of this tendency may be The Song ofHiawatha by Longfellow. This poem uses Native American talescollected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who was superintendent of

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Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841. Longfellow also imitated the meter of the Finnish epic poemKalevala, possibly to avoid British models. The resulting poem, while a popular success, did not provide a model forfuture U.S. poets.

Emily Dickinson

Another factor that distinguished these poets from their Britishcontemporaries was the influence of the transcendentalism of thepoet/philosophers Emerson and Thoreau. Transcendentalism was thedistinctly American strain of English Romanticism that began withWilliam Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Emerson, arguablyone of the founders of transcendentalism, had visited England as ayoung man to meet these two English poets, as well as ThomasCarlyle. While Romanticism transitioned into Victorianism inpost-reform England, it grew more energetic in America from the1830s through to the Civil War.

Edgar Allan Poe was probably the most recognized American poetoutside of America during this period. Diverse authors in France,Sweden and Russia were heavily influenced by his works, and hispoem "The Raven" swept across Europe, translated into manylanguages. In the twentieth century the American poet William CarlosWilliams said of Poe that he is the only solid ground on whichAmerican poetry is anchored.

Whitman and Dickinson

Walt Whitman

The final emergence of a truly indigenous English-language poetry inthe United States was the work of two poets, Walt Whitman(1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). On the surface, thesetwo poets could not have been less alike. Whitman's long lines, derivedfrom the metric of the King James Version of the Bible, and hisdemocratic inclusiveness stand in stark contrast with Dickinson'sconcentrated phrases and short lines and stanzas, derived fromProtestant hymnals.

What links them is their common connection to Emerson (a passagefrom whom Whitman printed on the second edition of Leaves ofGrass), and the daring originality of their visions. These two poets canbe said to represent the birth of two major American poeticidioms—the free metric and direct emotional expression of Whitman,and the gnomic obscurity and irony of Dickinson—both of whichwould profoundly stamp the American poetry of the 20th century.[10]

The development of these idioms, as well as more conservative reactions against them, can be traced through theworks of poets such as Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Robert Frost(1874–1963) and Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Frost, in particular, is a commanding figure, who aligned strict poetic

meter, particularly blank verse and terser lyrical forms, with a "vurry Amur'k'n" (as Pound put it) idiom. He successfully revitalized a rural tradition with many English antecedents from his beloved Golden Treasury and

American poetry 4

produced an oeuvre of major importance, rivaling or even excelling in achievement that of the key modernists andmaking him, within the full sweep of more traditional modern English-language verse, a peer of Hardy and Yeats.But from Whitman and Dickson the outlines of a distinctively new organic poetic tradition, less indebted to Englishformalism than Frost's work, were clear to see, and they would come to full fruition in the 1910s and 20's.

Modernism and afterThis new idiom, combined with a study of 19th-century French poetry, formed the basis of American input into20th-century English-language poetic modernism. Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) were theleading figures at the time, with their rejection of traditional poetic form and meter and of Victorian diction. Bothsteered American poetry toward greater density, difficulty, and opacity, with an emphasis on techniques such asfragmentation, ellipsis, allusion, juxtaposition, ironic and shifting personae, and mythic parallelism. Pound, inparticular, opened up American poetry to diverse influences, including the traditional poetries of China and Japan.Numerous other poets made important contributions at this revolutionary juncture, including Gertrude Stein(1874–1946), Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)(1886–1961), Marianne Moore (1887–1972), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), and Hart Crane (1899–1932). Thecerebral and skeptical Romantic Stevens helped revive the philosophical lyric, and Williams was to becomeexemplary for many later poets because he, more than any of his peers, contrived to marry spoken American Englishwith free verse rhythms. Cummings remains notable for his experiments with typography and evocation of aspontaneous, child-like vision of reality.Whereas these poets were unambiguously aligned with high modernism, other poets active in the United States in thefirst third of the 20th century were not. Among the most important of the latter were those who were associated withwhat came to be known as the New Criticism. These included John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), Allen Tate(1899–1979), and Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989). Other poets of the era, such as Archibald MacLeish(1892–1982), experimented with modernist techniques but were also drawn towards more traditional modes ofwriting. Still others, such as Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962), adopted Modernist freedom while remaining aloof fromModernist factions and programs.In addition, there were still other, early 20th Century poets who maintained or were forced to maintain a peripheralrelationship to high modernism, likely due to the racially charged themes of their work. They include Countee Cullen(1903–1946), Alice Dunbar Nelson (1875–1935), Gwendolyn Bennett (1902–1981), Langston Hughes (1902–1967),Claude McKay (1889–1946=8), Jean Toomer (1894–1967) and other African American poets of the HarlemRenaissance.The modernist torch was carried in the 1930s mainly by the group of poets known as the Objectivists. Theseincluded Louis Zukofsky (1904–1978), Charles Reznikoff (1894–1976), George Oppen (1908–1984), Carl Rakosi(1903–2004) and, later, Lorine Niedecker (1903–1970). Kenneth Rexroth, who was published in the ObjectivistAnthology, was, along with Madeline Gleason (1909–1973), a forerunner of the San Francisco Renaissance. Many ofthe Objectivists came from urban communities of new immigrants, and this new vein of experience and languageenriched the growing American idiom.

World War II and afterArchibald Macleish called John Gillespie Magee, Jr. "the first poet of the war".[11]

World War II saw the emergence of a new generation of poets, many of whom were influenced by Wallace Stevens.Richard Eberhart (1904–2005), Karl Shapiro (1913–2000), Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) and James Dickey(1923-1997) all wrote poetry that sprang from experience of active service. Together with Elizabeth Bishop(1911–1979), Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) and Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966), they formed a generation ofpoets that in contrast to the preceding generation often wrote in traditional verse forms.

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After the war, a number of new poets and poetic movements emerged. John Berryman (1914–1972) and RobertLowell (1917–1977) were the leading lights in what was to become known as the Confessional movement, whichwas to have a strong influence on later poets like Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) and Anne Sexton (1928–1974). Thoughboth Berryman and Lowell were closely acquainted with Modernism, they were mainly interested in exploring theirown experiences as subject matter and a style that Lowell referred to as "cooked" -- that is, consciously and carefullycrafted.

Denise Levertov

In contrast, the Beat poets, who included such figures asJack Kerouac (1922–1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997),Gregory Corso (1930–2001), Joanne Kyger (born 1934),Gary Snyder (born 1930), Diane Di Prima (born 1934),Amiri Baraka (born 1934) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born1919), were distinctly raw. Reflecting, sometimes in anextreme form, the more open, relaxed and searching societyof the 1950s and 1960s, the Beats pushed the boundaries ofthe American idiom in the direction of demotic speechperhaps further than any other group.

Around the same time, the Black Mountain poets, under theleadership of Charles Olson (1910–1970), were working at Black Mountain College. These poets were exploring thepossibilities of open form but in a much more programmatic way than the Beats. The main poets involved wereRobert Creeley (1926–2005), Robert Duncan (1919–1988), Denise Levertov (1923–1997), Ed Dorn (1929–1999),Paul Blackburn (1926–1971), Hilda Morley (1916–1998), John Wieners (1934–2002), and Larry Eigner(1927–1996). They based their approach to poetry on Olson's 1950 essay Projective Verse, in which he called for aform based on the line, a line based on human breath and a mode of writing based on perceptions juxtaposed so thatone perception leads directly to another.

Other poets often associated with the Black Mountain are Cid Corman (1924–2004) and Theodore Enslin (born1925), though they are perhaps more correctly viewed as direct descendants of the Objectivists. And one-time BlackMountain College resident, composer John Cage (1912–1992), along with Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004), wrotepoetry based on chance or aleatory techniques. Inspired by Zen, Dada and scientific theories of indeterminacy, theywere to prove to be important influences on the 1970s U.S avant-garde.

The Beats and some of the Black Mountain poets are often considered to have been responsible for the San FranciscoRenaissance. However, as previously noted, San Francisco had become a hub of experimental activity from the1930s thanks to Kenneth Rexroth and Gleason. Other poets involved in this scene included Charles Bukowski(1920–1994) and Jack Spicer (1925–1965). These poets sought to combine a contemporary spoken idiom withinventive formal experiment.Jerome Rothenberg (born 1931) is well known for his work in ethnopoetics, but he was also the coiner of the term"deep image," which he used to described the work of poets like Robert Kelly (born 1935), Diane Wakoski (born1937) and Clayton Eshleman (born 1935). Deep Image poetry was inspired by the symbolist theory ofcorrespondences, in particular the work of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The term was later taken up andpopularized by Robert Bly. The Deep Image movement was also the most international, accompanied by a flood ofnew translations from Latin American and European poets such as Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo and TomasTranströmer. Some of the poets who became associated with Deep Image are Galway Kinnell, James Wright, MarkStrand and W. S. Merwin. Both Merwin and California poet Gary Snyder would also become known for theirinterest in environmental and ecological concerns.The Small Press poets (sometimes called the mimeograph movement) are another influential and eclectic group of poets who also surfaced in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1950s and are still active today. Fiercely independent editors, who were also poets, edited and published low-budget periodicals and chapbooks of emerging

American poetry 6

poets who might otherwise have gone unnoticed. This work ranged from formal to experimental. Gene Fowler, A. D.Winans, Hugh Fox, street poet and activist Jack Hirschman, Paul Foreman, Jim Cohn, John Bennett, and F. A.Nettelbeck are among the many poets who are still actively continuing the Small Press Poets tradition. Many haveturned to the new medium of the Web for its distribution capabilities.Los Angeles poets: Leland Hickman (1934–1991), Holly Prado ( born 1938), Harry Northup (born 1940), WandaColeman (born 1946), Michael C. Ford (born 1939), Kate Braverman (born 1950), Eloise Klein Healy, Bill Mohr,Laurel Ann Bogen, met at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in Venice, California. They are lyric poets, heavilyautobiographical; some are practitioners of the experimental long poem. Mavericks all, their L.A. predecessors areAnn Stanford (1916–1987), Thomas McGrath (1916–1990), Jack Hirschman (born 1933). Beyond Baroque LiteraryArts Center, created by George Drury Smith in 1968, is the central literary arts center in the Los Angeles area.Just as the West Coast had the San Francisco Renaissance and the Small Press Movement, the East Coast producedthe New York School. This group aimed to write poetry that spoke directly of everyday experience in everydaylanguage and produced a poetry of urbane wit and elegance that contrasts with the work of their Beat contemporaries(though in other ways, including their mutual respect for American slang and disdain for academic or "cooked"poetry, they were similar). Leading members of the group include John Ashbery (born 1927), Frank O'Hara(1926–1966), Kenneth Koch (1925–2002), James Schuyler (1923–1991), Barbara Guest (1920–2006), Ted Berrigan(1934–1983), Anne Waldman (born 1945) and Bernadette Mayer (born 1945). Of this group, John Ashbery, inparticular, has emerged as a defining force in recent poetics, and he is regarded by many as the most importantAmerican poet since World War II.

American poetry todayThe last thirty years in United States poetry have seen the emergence of a number of groups, schools, and trends,whose lasting importance has, necessarily, yet to be demonstrated.

Nikki Giovanni

The 1970s saw a revival of interest in surrealism, with the mostprominent poets working in this field being Andrei Codrescu (born1946), Russell Edson (born 1935) and Maxine Chernoff (born 1952).Performance poetry also emerged from the Beat and hippiehappenings, and the talk-poems of David Antin (born 1932) and ritualevents performed by Rothenberg, to become a serious poetic stancewhich embraces multiculturalism and a range of poets from amultiplicity of cultures. This mirrored a general growth of interest inpoetry by African Americans including Gwendolyn Brooks (born1917), Maya Angelou (born 1928), Ishmael Reed (born 1938),VimKarénin, Nikki Giovanni (born 1943), and Detrick Hughes (born1966).

Another group of poets, the Language school (orL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, after the magazine that bears that name), have continued and extended the Modernist andObjectivist traditions of the 1930s. Some poets associated with the group are Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, BobPerelman and Leslie Scalapino. Their poems—fragmentary, purposefully ungrammatical, sometimes mixing textsfrom different sources and idioms—can be by turns abstract, lyrical, and highly comic. Critics of the Languageschool point out that, by abandoning sense and context, their poetry could just as well be written by the proverbialinfinite roomful of monkeys with typewriters.

The Language school includes a high proportion of women, which mirrors another general trend—the rediscovery and promotion of poetry written both by earlier and contemporary women poets. A number of the most prominent African American poets to emerge are women, and other prominent women writers include Adrienne Rich (born

American poetry 7

1929), Jean Valentine (born 1934) and Amy Gerstler (born 1956).Although poetry in traditional classical forms had mostly fallen out of fashion by the 1960s, the practice was keptalive by poets of great formal virtuosity like James Merrill (1926–1995), author of the epic poem The ChangingLight at Sandover (1982), Richard Wilbur, and British-born San Francisco poet Thom Gunn. The 1980s and 1990ssaw a re-emergent interest in traditional form, sometimes dubbed New Formalism or Neoformalism. These includepoets such as Molly Peacock, Brad Leithauser, Dana Gioia, Donna J. Stone, Timothy Steele, and Marilyn Hacker.Some of the more outspoken New Formalists have declared that the return to rhyme and more fixed meters to be thenew avant-garde. Their critics sometimes associate this traditionalism with the conservative politics of the Reaganera, noting the recent appointment of Gioia as Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. More recent examplesof New Formalism, however, have sometimes crossed over into the more experimental territory of Language poetry,suggesting that both schools are being gradually absorbed into the poetic mainstream.Haiku has also attracted a community of American poets dedicated to its development as a serious poetic genre inEnglish. The extremely terse Japanese haiku first influenced the work of Pound and the Imagists, and post-war poetssuch as Kerouac and Richard Wright wrote substantial bodies of original haiku in English. Other poets such asGinsberg, Snyder, Wilbur, Merwin, and many others have at least dabbled with haiku, often simply as a syllabicform. Starting in 1963, with the founding of the journal American Haiku, poets such as Cor van den Heuvel, NickVirgilio, Raymond Roseliep, John Wills, Anita Virgil, Gary Hotham, Marlene Mountain, Wally Swist, Peggy WillisLyles, George Swede, vincent tripi, Jim Kacian, and others have created significant oeuvres of haiku poetry,evincing continuities with both Transcendentalism and Imagism and often maintaining an anti-anthropocentricenvironmental focus on nature during an unparalleled age of habitat destruction and human alienation.The last two decades have also seen a revival of the Beat poetry spoken word tradition, in the form of the poetryslam. Devised in 1984, by Chicago construction worker Marc Smith, these competitive audience-judged poetryperformances emphasize a style of writing that is topical, provocative and easily understood. Poetry slam opened thedoor for a new generation of writers and spoken word performers, including Alix Olson, Apollo Poetry, Taylor Mali,and Saul Williams, and inspired hundreds of open mics across the country. Poetry has also become a significantpresence on the Web, with a number of new online journals, 'zines, blogs and other websites.During this time frame there were also major independent voices who defied links to well-known American poeticmovements and forms such as poet and literary critic Robert Peters, greatly influenced by the Victorian English poetRobert Browning’s poetic monologues, became reputable for executing his monologic personae like his Mad KingLudwig II of Bavaria into popular one-man performances.Robert Pinsky has a special place in American poetry as he was the Poet Laureate of the United States for threeterms. No other poet has been so honored. His "Favorite Poem Project" is unique, inviting all citizens to share theirall-time favorite poetic composition and why they love it. He is a professor at Boston University and the poetryeditor at Slate. "Poems to Read"[12] is only one demonstration of his masterful poetic vision, joining the word and thecommon man. In general, poetry in the contemporary era has been moving out of the mainstream and onto thecollege and university campus. The growth in the popularity of graduate creative writing programs has given poetsthe opportunity to make a living as teachers. This increased professionalization of poetry, combined with thereluctance of most major book and magazine presses to publish poetry, has meant that, for the foreseeable future atleast, poetry may have found its new home in the academy and in small independent journals.

American poetry 8

References[1] Einhorn, Lois J. The Native American Oral Tradition: Voices of the Spirit and Soul (ISBN 0-275-95790-X)[2] Aldridge, John (1958). After the Lost Generation: A Critical Study of the Writers of Two Wars. Noonday Press. Original from the University

of Michigan Digitized Mar 31, 2006.[3] Moulton, Charles (1901). The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. The Moulton Publishing Company. Original

from the New York Public Library Digitized Oct 27, 2006.Anne Bradstreet: "our earliest woman poet"[4] Davis, Virginia (1997). The Tayloring Shop: Essays on the Poetry of Edward Taylor. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-623-7.[5] Danforth, Samuel. "Almanacks" (http:/ / digitalcommons. unl. edu/ libraryscience/ 36/ )[6] Williams, George (1882). History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. G.P. Putnam's Sons. Original from Harvard University

Digitized Aug 18, 2006.[7] Gregson, Susan (2002). Phillis Wheatley. Capstone Press. ISBN 0-7368-1033-1.[8] Lubbers, Klaus (1994). Born for the Shade: Stereotypes of the Native American in United States Literature and the Visual Arts, 1776-1894.

Rodopi. ISBN 90-5183-628-7.[9] Lucy Larcom: Landscape in American Poetry (1879).[10] Untermeyer, Louis (1921). Modern American Poetry. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Original from the New York Public Library Digitized

Oct 6, 2006.[11] "High Flier" (http:/ / www. qunl. com/ rees0008. html). April 1992 issue, Volume 1, Number 2. . Retrieved 7 October 2010.[12] "Robert Pinsky" (http:/ / www. poets. org/ poet. php/ prmPID/ 200). poets.org. . Retrieved 7 October 2010.

External links• American English Literature Forum (http:/ / englishliteratureforum. com)• Cary Nelson, Ed. (1999–2002) Poet biographies at Modern American Poetry (http:/ / www. english. uiuc. edu/

maps/ poets. htm). Retrieved December 5, 2004• Poet biographies at the Academy of American Poets (http:/ / www. poets. org/ poets/ index. cfm) Captured

December 10, 2004• Poet biographies at the Electronic Poetry Centre (http:/ / epc. buffalo. edu/ authors/ ) Captured December 10,

2004• Various anthologies of American verse at Bartleby.com (http:/ / www. bartleby. com/ verse/ ) Captured December

10, 2004• Poetry Resource (http:/ / www. poetryresource. org/ ) a website for students of poetry• Baym, Nina, et al. (eds.): The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Shorter sixth edition, 2003). ISBN

0-393-97969-5• Cavitch, Max, American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman (University of Minnesota

Press, 2007). ISBN 0-8166-4893-X• Hoover, Paul (ed): Postmodern American Poetry - A Norton Anthology (1994). ISBN 0-393-31090-6• Moore, Geoffrey (ed): The Penguin Book of American Verse (Revised edition 1983) ISBN 0-14-042313-3

Article Sources and Contributors 9

Article Sources and ContributorsAmerican poetry  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=492553231  Contributors: A Musing, A. B., ATMarsden, AbsolutDan, Acalamari, Agnelli.kate, Akbikerpoet, Alan Liefting,Ali'i, AmericanCitizen, Andrewbadr, Aps301, Arch dude, Arnauddevial, Arwel Parry, Axlq, B7342, Bearcat, Benna, Betacommand, Biker Poet, Bishonen, Bobblewik, Bpt, Calmypal,CanadianLinuxUser, CanisRufus, Charles Matthews, CharlieZeb, Chaser, Ched Davis, Chick Bowen, ChrisGualtieri, ChrisGuitarTNF, Christian Roess, Ckatz, CommonsDelinker, CompetitionAround the World, Consequencefree, Conti, Cromwellt, CryptoDerk, Cuchullain, Cullow, CulturalUniverse, D6, Danahuff, David Gerard, DavidA, Dcoetzee, Dddinardi, DeansFA, Dekisugi,Dorfl, DrJackDempsey, Dreftymac, Durova, DutchmanInDisguise, EdOByrne, Elricario, Evb-wiki, ExplorerCDT, Filiocht, FilmFemme, Frazzydee, Frecklefoot, FreplySpang, GeorgeStepanek,Gwyllem, HOUSE OF PAINE, Haeleth, HangingCurve, Heron, Hmains, Hubertfarnsworth, Hydriotaphia, Hydrotaphia, Icarus of old, Ichthys58, Ida Shaw, Ijil RHG, J.delanoy, Jahsonic,JamesMLane, January, Jengod, Jiang, Jickley, Jimroberts, Jmabel, JoelCurtis16, Joelr31, JohnWBarber, Johnnyappledog, Jonathunder, Jprobertson67, Jrdioko, Justin Eiler, Kalvin554, Knolls,Korath, LarRan, Lenoxus, LillianCKatz, Lostweekend, Lupin, Lupo, Mary Sayler, Massmarkpro, Mav, Mel Etitis, Mhking, Michael Devore, Michael Hardy, Midnightdreary, MikeWazowski,Mild Bill Hiccup, MisfitToys, Moamenam, Moe Epsilon, Moriori, Mpesce, Mulad, Mustafaa, Natcheznme, Newwhist, NickW557, Noren, Noroton, Northmeister, Nyvhek, Omicronpersei8,Outriggr, Paganpan, Pcpcpc, Pjt48, Poetactionboy, Proyster, Pteron, Qxz, RL0919, Raul654, Rdsmith4, RedWolf, RedWordSmith, Rich Farmbrough, Rje, Rjstott, Rmhermen, Rrmsjp, Rtdrury,Rwinte82, Ryuhaku, Sade, SamuelTheGhost, Sandover, Sausundbraus, Sblauvelt, Scutigera, Sebesta, Sfdan, Sharklazers, Shinobi.cl, Sintaku, Smorsepluggy, Soakologist, SpookyMulder, Stumps,Susvolans, THEN WHO WAS PHONE?, TUF-KAT, Tassedethe, Taxman, Template namespace initialisation script, Thaurisil, The Thing That Should Not Be, TheLeopard, Theroadislong,Tomthumb1, Tona ff444r, Tony1, Tristanreid, Valfontis, Viajero, Vsmith, Wayward, Wfaulk, Xiao Li, Yllosubmarine, Yuckfoo, 168 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsImage:Phillis Wheatley frontispiece.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Phillis_Wheatley_frontispiece.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Scipio MoorheadImage:henry wasdworth longfellow.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Henry_wasdworth_longfellow.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Andreagrossmann,Howcheng, JedImage:EmilyDickinson.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:EmilyDickinson.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Deadstar, Durova, Gabor, GeorgeStepanek,IronSwallow, JackleeImage:Walt Whitman edit 2.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Walt_Whitman_edit_2.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: George C. Cox (1851–1902)UNIQ-ref-2-1370fe04d7be86c1-QINUImage:Denise-levertov.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Denise-levertov.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported  Contributors: taken byElsa Dorfman on Flagg St, Cambridge, MAImage:Niki-giovanni.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Niki-giovanni.jpg  License: GNU Free Documentation License  Contributors: BazookaJoe, Elsad, Jhsounds,SallyForth123, 3 anonymous edits

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