Preface
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Topical Table of Contents
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
One's Self I Sing
I Hear America Singing
As Adam Early in the Morning
For You O Democracy
I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
A Glimpse
Vigil Strange I
Kept on the Field One Night
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
TOO-QUA-STEE/DEWITT CLINTON DUNCAN (1829-1909)
The White Man's Burden
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)
49 (I never lost as much but twice)
258 (There's a certain Slant of light,)
280 (I felt a
Funeral, in my Brain)
303 (The Soul selects her own Society)
341 (After great pain, a formal feeling comes-)
435 (Much madness is divinest sense)
465 (I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-)
508 (I'm ceded-I've stopped being Theirs)
520 (I started Early-Took my Dog-)
585 (I like
to see it lap the Miles-)
601 (A still-Volcano-Life-)
613 (They shut me up in Prose)
657 (I dwell in Possibility-)
712 (Because I could not stop for Death)
754 (My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun-)
1072 (Title divine-is mine!)
1129 (Tell all the Truth but tell it
slant-)
1705 (Volcanoes be in Sicily)
EDWIN MARKHAM (1852-1940)
The Man With the Hoe
A Look Into the Gulf
Outwitted
SADAKICHI HARTMANN (1867-1944)
Cyanogen Seas Are Surging
Tanka I
Tanka III
EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868-1950)
Lucinda
Matlock
Petit, the Poet
Seth Compton
Trainor, the Druggist
Minerva Jones
Cleanthus Trilling
W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868-1963)
The Song of the Smoke
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935)
The House on the Hill
Richard Cory
The Clerks
Miniver
Cheevy
The Mill
The Dark Hills
Mr. Flood's Party
The Tree in Pamela's Garden
STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)
IN THE DESERT
MANY RED DEVILS RAN FROM MY HEART
A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind
Do not weep, babe,
for war is kind
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938)
O Black and Unknown Bards
The Creation
The White Witch
My City
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (1872-1906)
We Wear the Mask
When Malindy Sings
Sympathy
The Haunted Oak
ALEXANDER POSEY
(1873-1908)
The Decree
On the Capture and Imprisonment of Crazy Snake, January
1901
The Fall of the Redskin
LOLA RIDGE (1873-1941)
Stone Face
from Ice Heart
AMY LOWELL (1874-1925)
A Fixed Idea
The Mediterranean (from Sea-Blue and
Blood-Red)
Midday and Afternoon (from Spring Day)
Thompson's Lunch Room-Grand Central Station
The Taxi
September, 1918
The Letter
Venus Transiens
Madonna of the Evening Flowers
The Weather-Cock Points South
Opal
Wakefulness
Grotesque` The
Sisters
GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946)
Susie Asado
Patriarchal Poetry
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
The Mill City
The Parlor Joke
In Hardwood Groves
Mending Wall
Home Burial
After Apple-Picking
The Wood-Pile
The Road Not Taken
Birches
The
Death of the Hired Man
The Vanishing Red
Putting in the Seed
Out, Out
Hyla Brook
The Oven Bird
An Old Man's Winter Night
The Hill Wife
Fire and Ice
Good-By and Keep Cold
The Need of Being Versed In Country Things
Design
The Witch of Coes
Stopping
By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Neither Out Far Nor in Deep
Provide, provide
Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same
The Gift Outright
ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON (1875-1935)
I Sit and Sew
CARL SANDBURG
(1878-1967)
Chicago
Subway
Muckers
Child of the Romans
Nigger
Buttons
Planked Whitefish
Cool Tombs
Grass
Fog
Gargoyle
Elizabeth Umpstead
Man, The Man-Hunter
Two Humpties
VACHEL LINDSAY (1879-1931)
The Congo
The
Child-heart in the Mountains
Celestial Flowers of Glacier Park
The Virginians Are Coming Again
Words About An Ancient Queen
WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)
Domination of Black
Sea Surface Full of Clouds
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Tea at the Palaz of
Hoon
Floral Decoration for Bananas
Anecdote of the Jar
Disillusionment of Ten O'clock
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
The Snow Man
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Sunday Morning
The Death of a Soldier
The Idea of Order at Key
West
Mozart, 1935
A Postcard from the Volcano
Study of Two Pears
Of Modern Poetry
The Course of a Particular
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
The Plain Sense of Things
As You Leave the Room
A Clear Day and No Memories
Of Mere Being
ANGELINA WELD
GRIMK (1880-1958)
The Black Finger
Tenebris
A Mona Lisa
Fragment
GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON (1880-1966)
The Heart of a Woman
Common Dust
Motherhood
My Little Dreams
MINA LOY (1882-1966)
(There is No Life or Death)
O Hell
Songs to
Joannes
ANNE SPENCER (1882-1975)
White Things
Lady, Lady
(God never planted a garden)
Dunbar
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)
The Young Housewife
Portrait of a Lady
Queen-Anne's-Lace
The Widow's Lament in Springtime
The Great
Figure
Spring and All
To Elsie
The Red Wheelbarrow
Young Sycamore
The Descent of Winter
This is Just to Say
Proletarian Portrait
The Yachts
The Dance
The Descent
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, Book I
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
ARSENIUS
CHALECO (1884-1939)
The Indian Requiem
SARA TEASDALE (1884-1933)
I Shall Not Care
Enough
Spring in the Naugatuck Valley
There Will Come Soft Rains
The Unchanging
ELINOR WYLIE (1885-1928)
The Eagle and the
Mole
August
Sanctuary
Sonnet
Self-Portrait
Let No Charitable Hope
EZRA POUND (1885-1972)
A Pact
In a Station of the Metro
The Rest
Portrait d'une Femme
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
from THE CANTOS:
I (And then went down to the
ship)
IX (One year floods rose)
XLV (With Usura)
LXXXI (Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom)
CXVI (Came Neptunus)
Notes for CXVII (I have tried to write paradise)
H.D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886-1961)
The Pool
Oread
Mid-day
Sea Rose
Garden
The
Helmsman
Eurydice
Helen
from The Walls Do Not Fall
1
6
39
ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887-1962)
Shine, Perishing Republic
Fawn's Foster-Mother
Hurt Hawks
November Surf
The Purse-Seine
Fantasy
Cassandra
Vulture
Birds and Fishes
Fire on
the Hills
Antrim
(I saw a regiment of soldiers)
An Extinct Vertebrate
(I walk on my cliff)
The Epic Stars
MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)
Black Earth
Poetry
An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish
The Fish
Sojourn in the Whale
A
Graveyard
Silence
Peter
Marriage
An Octopus
No Swan So Fine
The Pangolin
Bird-Witted
The Paper Nautilus
Spenser's Ireland
T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Preludes
Gerontion
The Waste Land
The Hollow
Men
Journey of the Magi
from Four Quartets:
Burnt Norton
JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974)
Sonnets of a Selfish Lover
Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter
CLAUDE McKAY (1889-1948)
The Harlem Dancer
To The White Fiends
If We Must Die
The
Lynching
The Tropics in New York
The White City
America
Outcast
Mulatto
The Negro's Tragedy
Look Within
Tiger
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950)
First Fig
Second Fig
Recuerdo
Grown-Up
Spring
I, Being Born a Woman and
Distressed
Love is not blind
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree
Justice Denied in Massachusetts
Say That We Saw Spain Die
ARCHIBALD MacLEISH (1892-1982)
Ars Poetica
The Silent Slain
The End of the World
DOROTHY
PARKER (1893-1967)
Unfortunate Coincidence
Résumé
One Perfect Rose
Thomas Carlyle
Walter Savage Landor
News Item
The Dark Girl's Rhyme
GENEVIEVE TAGGARD (1894-1948)
Everyday Alchemy
With Child
Up State--Depression Summer
Mill Town
Ode in
Time of Crisis
To the Negro People
To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962)
Thy fingers make early flowers of
in Just-
O sweet spontaneous
Buffalo Bill's
Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal
next to of course god america i
my
sweet old etcetera
i sing of Olaf glad and big
Space being(don't forget to remember)Curved
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
anyone lived in a pretty how town
JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967)
from Cane:
Reapers
November Cotton Flower
Portrait in Georgia
Her Lips Are Copper
Wire
CHARLES REZNIKOFF (1894-1976)
April
Aphrodite Vraina
(On Brooklyn Bridge, I Saw a Man Drop Dead)
(I Walked through the Lonely Marsh)
from Testimony: The United States (1885-1915):
Negroes
from Holocaust:
Massacres
HERMAN SPECTOR
(1895-1959)
Wiseguy Type
V. J. JEROME (1896-1965)
A Negro Mother to Her Child
JOHN WHEELWRIGHT (1897-1940)
Plantation Drouth
Cross Questions
JOSEPH FREEMAN (1897-1965)
Our age has Caesars
LUCIA TRENT (1897-1977)
Breed, Women,
Breed
Black Men
Parade the Narrow Turrets
LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970)
Medusa
The Crows
Women
The Alchemist
The Dragonfly
Cassandra
RUTH MARGARET MUSKRAT (1897-1982)
Songs of the Spavinaw
Sentenced
HARRY CROSBY
(1898-1929)
Photoheliograph (For Lady A.)
Pharmacie Du Soleil
Tattoo
from Short Introduction to the Word
HART CRANE (1899-1932)
October-November
Black Tambourine
Chaplinesque
Episode of Hands
Porphyro in Akron
Voyages I
from The
Bridge
Proem: to Brooklyn Bridge
I Ave Maria
from II (Powhatan's Daughter): The River
IV Cape Hatteras
from V (Three Songs): Southern Cross
VI Quaker Hill
VIII Atlantis
The Mango Tree
LYNN RIGGS (1899-1954)
The Corrosive
Season
Footprints
ALLEN TATE (1899-1979)
Ode to the Confederate Dead
MELVIN B. TOLSON (1900?-1966)
Dark Symphony
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
YVOR WINTERS (1900-1968)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Vacant Lot
STERLING A. BROWN
(1901-1989)
Southern Road
Scotty Has His Say
Memphis Blues
Slim in Atlanta
Rent Day Blues
Old Lem
Sharecroppers
Southern Cop
Choices
LAURA (RIDING) JACKSON (1901-1991)
Helen's Burning
The Wind Suffers
Elegy in a Spider's Web
The Map
of Places
KENNETH FEARING (1902-1961)
Dear Beatrice Fairfax
$2.50
Dirge
Denouement
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)
Question
Negro
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Weary Blues
The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)
To the Dark Mercedes of "El
Palacio de Amor"
Mulatto
Justice
Fire
White Shadows
Christ in Alabama
Three Songs About Lynching
Silhouette
Flight
Lynching Song
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria
Goodbye Christ
Ballad of Roosevelt
Park Bench
Let America Be America Again
Letter
from Spain
The Bitter River
Ku Klux
Shakespeare in Harlem
Madam and the Phone Bill
Ballad of the Landlord
Harlem
Late Corner
Dinner Guest: Me
The Backlash Blues
Bombings in Dixie
ARNA BONTEMPS (1902-1973)
A Black Man Talks of
Reaping
Southern Mansion
Miracles
GWENDOLYN BENNETT (1902-1981)
To a Dark Girl
Heritage
Street Lamps in Early Spring
Dirge for a Free Spirit
I Build America
(Rapacious women who sit on steps at night)
COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946)
Christ
Recrucified
In Praise of Boys
Incident
For a Lady I Know
Yet Do I Marvel
Near White
Tableau
Heritage
From the Dark Tower
LORINE NIEDECKER (1903-1970)
Well, Spring Overflows the Land
Paean to Place
Poet's work
KAY BOYLE
(1903-1993)
A Communication to Nancy Cunard
CARL RAKOSI (1903-2004)
The Menage
AQUA LALUAH (1904-1950)
The Serving Girl
Lullaby
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY (1904-1978)
To My Wash Stand
"Mantis"
A Song for the Year's End
Because Tarzan Triumphs
(from Light)
Non Ti Fidar
JOHN BEECHER (1904-1980)
Report to the Stockholders
Beaufort Tides
Engagement at the Salt Fork
A Veteran's Day of Recollection
KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982)
The Love Poems of Marichiko
ROBERT PENN WARREN
(1905-1989)
Genealogy
Bearded Oaks
Mother Makes the Biscuits
Chain Saw at Dawn in Vermont in Time of Drouth
Natural History
Evening Hawk
Heart of Autumn
STANLEY KUNITZ (1905-2006)
The Wellfleet Whale
The Snakes of September
Day of
Foreboding
Touch Me
JOSEPH KALAR (1906-1972)
Papermill
Prosperity Blues: Minnesota
W. H. AUDEN (1907-1973)
Musée des Beaux Arts
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
September 1, 1939
The Shield of Achilles
THEODORE ROETHKE
(1908-1963)
Cuttings
Cuttings (later)
Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze
from The Lost Son:
The Flight
My Papa's Waltz
I Knew a Woman
North American Sequence:
The Longing
Meditation at Oyster River
Journey to the Interior
The Long
Waters
The Far Field
The Rose
GEORGE OPPEN (1908-1984)
Image of the Engine
Survival: Infantry
In Alsace
Exodus
EDWIN ROLFE (1909-1954)
Asbestos
Season of Death
First Love
Elegia
After Tu Fu (A.D. 713-770)
Now the Fog
A Letter
to the Denouncers
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been
A Poem to Delight My Friends Who Laugh at Science-Fiction
In Praise Of
June 19,1953
Pastoral-1954
Little Ballad for Americans--1954
SOL FUNAROFF (1911-1942)
Unemployed: 2 A.M.
The Man At The Factory
Gate
The Bull in the Olive Field
Goin Mah Own Road
MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980)
The Book of the Dead
The Minotaur
(To be a Jew in the Twentieth century)
Rite
The Poem As Mask
Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)
Poem White Page/ White Page
Poem
ANGEL ISLAND: POEMS BY CHINESE IMMIGRANTS (1910-1940)
Instead of remaining a citizen of China
The seascape, resembling lichen, undulates endlessly
Putting away my books and my inkstone
Drifting like duckweed
I write this poem to let my dear wife know
The
silver-red shirt is half covered with dust
Over a hundred poems are on the walls
What have I done that I must sit in jail?
Unoccupied, I opened the window of the wooden building
Angel Island's three-beamed building shields only the body
Twice I have crossed the blue ocean
The
dragon out of water is humiliated by ants
The Flowery Flag will be taken down for ours to hoist
I advise you never to sneak across the border for America
The blue ocean surrounds a lone mountain
America has power, but not justice
WWI in Britain and Ireland:
WILLIAM
BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939)
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
The Second Coming
EDWARD THOMAS (1878-1917)
Rain
February Afternoon
SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886-1967)
The Rear Guard
Dreamers
Repression of War Experience
The General
ISAAC
ROSENBERG (1890-1918)
Break of Day in the Trenches
Dead Man's Dump
WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918)
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Dulce et Decorum Est
GRAPHIC INTERPRETATIONS:
EDWIN MARKHAM
The Man With the Hoe
VACHEL LINDSAY
Drink for
Sale
The Virginians Are Coming Again
LANGSTON HUGHES
Christ in Alabama
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria
Index of Poem Titles
Index of Poets
About the Editor
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author or editor of 28 books, including Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and The Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945 (1989),
which helped revolutionize the study of American poetry.
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry - Edited by Cary Nelson
