"SPANNING OVER 300 YEARS of our history, Poems for America is nothing less than a compendium of the American experience in verse. If you want to hear the full chorus of America singing, make this distinguished anthology a part of your library."

--Billy Collins, author of Sailing Alone Around the Room

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.

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 ChiM (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 WardHowe (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): "Anerica"

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"

"THANKSGMNG (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"

HeleneJohnson (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"

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

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

Frank O’Hara (1926-1966): "Music"

Allen Ginsberg (192 6-1997): "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"

……

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF POEM TITLES

INDEX OF POETS

PERMISSIONS