Written by a leading authority on William Carlos Williams, this book provides a wide-ranging and stimulating guide to twentieth-century American poetry. A wide-ranging and stimulating critical guide to twentieth-century American poetry. Written by a leading authority on the innovative modernist poet, William Carlos Williams. Explores the material, historical and social contexts in which twentieth-century American poetry was produced. Includes a biographical dictionary of major writers with extended entries on poets ranging from Robert Frost to Adrienne Rich. Contains a section on key texts considering major works, such as: "The Waste Land", "North & South", "Howl" and "Ariel". The final section draws out key themes, such as American poetry, politics and war, and the process of anthologizing at the end of the century.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• How To Use This Book
• Chronology: Significant Dates and Events, 1900-2000
• Introduction
• Some Historical and Cultural Contexts of Twentieth-Century American Poetry
• The Romantic Legacy and the Genteel Tradition
• Transatlantic Connections
• Tradition and the Rise of the Universities
• Rebellion in the Fifties and Sixties: The Two Anthologies
• The Poetry of Change
• A Rich Diversity
• Writers
• Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
• Robert Frost (1874-1963)
• Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
• William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
• Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
• H.D. (Hilda Doolittle; 1886-1961)
• Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
• Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
• T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
• John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
• Claude McKay (1890-1948)
• E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
• Hart Crane (1899-1932)
• Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
• Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978)
• Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
• George Oppen (1908-1984)
• Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
• Charles Olson (1910-1970)
• Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
• John Berryman (1914-1972)
• Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
• Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
• Robert Duncan (1919-1988)
• Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
• Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
• James Dickey (1923-1997)
• A. R. Ammons (1926-2001)
• Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
• Robert Creeley (b. 1926)
• Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)
• James Merrill (1926-1995)
• John Ashbery (b. 1927)
• Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)
• W. S. Merwin (b. 1927)
• Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
• Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
• Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
• Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
• Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
• Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934)
• Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
• Susan Howe (b. 1937)
• Louise Glück (b. 1943)
• Jorie Graham (b. 1951)
• Gary Soto (b. 1952)
• Rita Dove (b. 1952)
• Texts
• Robert Frost, North of Boston: (1914)
• Ezra Pound, ed., Des Imagistes: An Anthology: (1914)
• Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Man Against the Sky: A Book of Poems (1916)
• T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
• Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows (1922)
• Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923)
• William Carlos Williams, Spring and All: (1923)
• Marianne Moore, Observations (1924)
• Hart Crane, The Bridge (1930)
• Elizabeth Bishop, North & South (1946)
• Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos (1948)
• Theodore Roethke, The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
• Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (1956)
• Robert Lowell, Life Studies (1959)
• Donald Allen, ed., The New American Poetry (1960)
• Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965)
• John Berryman, The Dream Songs (1969)
• Amiri Baraka, Black Magic: Sabotage, Target Study, Black Art; Collected Poetry, 1961-1967 (1969)
• Galway Kinnell, The Book of Nightmares (1971)
• Anne Sexton, Transformations (1971)
• John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
• Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 (1978)
• Carolyn Forché, The Country Between Us (1981)
• James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover (1982)
• Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah (1986)
• Topics
• Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Other Arts
• Continuities and Nationality in Twentieth-Century American Poetry
• American Poetry and a Century of Wars
• The Twentieth-Century American Long Poem
• Anthologies: Polemical and Historical
• Guide to Further Reading