Nineteenth-Century American Poetry

Compiled to suggest what nineteenth-century America contributed to the history of poetry, rather than what poetry may contribute to a history of nineteenth-century America, this volume emphasizes those poets who have survived the Modernist revolution over those left behind. And so it is Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville who occupy the center of this anthology; these are the poets in whose ability to speak directly to our ears modern poetry has recognized its forebears. But only when these poetic innovators are read alongside the recognized giants of their day can we begin to see how truly extraordinary they are, and why they remained undervalued, unread, or altogether unknown in their own time. William C. Spengemann and Jessica F. Roberts have gathered nearly three hundred poems, spanning the course of the century: from Joel Barlow to Edwin Arlington Robinson, by way of Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Holmes, Jones Very, Thoreau, Lowell, Lanier, and the largely forgotten Frederick Goddard Tuckerman and Sarah Morgan Piatt.

William C. Spengemann is the Hale Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College. He edited the Penguin Classics edition of Nineteenth-Century American Poetry.