100 Essential American Poems - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312623976 ISBN 13: 9780312623975

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2010

Synopsis

The way we view our nation---its history, its traditions, even our distinctly American voice---is largely determined by our literature. In this rewarding and thought-provoking book are gathered poems that have been essential components of our common American culture, from the earliest days of our nation through canonic works of the nineteenth century and up to the present day. 100 Essential American Poems includes fondly remembered works by such familiar figures as Longfellow, Poe, and Whitman, and popular classics like "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and "Casey at the Bat," but it also features passionate outcries from poets like Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes that highlight our ongoing national racial tensions, and poems by such women as Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay that supply a distinctly female perspective on American life. Also included are the lyrics of such expressions of the American spirit as "Yankee Doodle," "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "This Land Is Your Land," in addition to a few surprises! The immortal poems and songs included here, each preceded by an illuminating headnote, will remind every reader of the richness and variety of the poetry of America and its people.

About this title

About the Author

Leslie M. Pockell is an editor at a major publishing house in New York. He is has compiled several highly acclaimed poetry collections, including the bestselling The 100 Best Poems of All Time.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–From the colonial period to the present, the focus in this winning collection is on works that are essential to a full appreciation of our national culture and character. Pockell's aim is to present canonical verse, with an eye toward multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multigenerational selection. In this he is mostly successful. Readers will find the golden nuggets of such giants as Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, and works from what some might consider a second tier of poets: John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Lee Masters, and Lowell (three Lowells, actually). And then there are the entries that make this book stand apart from similar collections: poems and lyrics with little or no literary merit. Among these are Yankee Doodle Dandy, Go Down Moses, Follow the Drinking Gourd, Casey at the Bat, Robert Johnson's Cross Roads Blues, and Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land. Some welcome surprises are Eugene Field's Little Boy Blue, Amy Lowell's A Decade, and Sound off Marching Cadence Count. There are also some questionable selections: Amazing Grace by John Newton (he was English); two poems by Robert W. Service (an Englishman who wrote about the Yukon); and, most notably, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Also, one could take exception to the inclusion of four poems by Anne Bradstreet but none by Phillis Wheatley. These criticisms aside, this volume deserves a place in most poetry collections.–Robert Saunderson, formerly at Berkeley Public Library, CA END

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312623976
• ISBN 13: 9780312623975
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Pockell Leslie M.