The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry

By: Parini, Jay

Book 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231081227
• ISBN13: 9780231081221
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 757 Pages
• Weight: 2.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.2" x 9.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

excellent resource for teaching

I've owned and loved this anthology for a decade. I'm especially fond of its choices in American nature poetry; it follows the transcendentalist line from Emerson and Thoreau and Dickinson through such Emersonian contemporaries as Louise Gluck and Charles Wright. This is also one of the few American poetry anthologies on the market that reaches back to pre-colonial times and moves right into the present. One of its interesting features is its representation of women's voices from the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the 20th century. There are also many African American poets. The book has obviously been through many printings, and over the years the editors have cleaned up copy-editing errors that appeared in the original edition. The introduction is fresh and appealing to students and readers of all levels. A great classroom book, although it's skimpy on the Beats and the West Coast school, and even the New York school (although the selection of poems by John Ashbery is particularly original).