Concise Anthology of American Literature

by McMichael, George; Leonard, James S.; Fisher Fishkin, Shelley; Bradley, David; Nelson, Dana D.; Csicsila, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9780205763108
• ISBN10: 0205763103
• Edition: 7th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-03
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

This concise anthology offers a balanced approach to the enjoyment of reading American literature. Over 20 new authors representing diverse cultural backgrounds allow students to read about unique experiences through the eyes of esteemed writers including Sonia Sanchez, Sherman Alexie, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Frances E.W. Harper.

New historical documents, including the romantic letters exchanged by John and Abigail Adams and an account of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a young soldier, provide an understanding for student readers. Four groundbreaking dramas (from the 18th century: Slaves in Algiers, by Susanna Haswell Rowson; from the 19th century: The Escape, by William Wells Brown; from the early 20th century: Trifles, by Susan Glaspell; and from the late 20th century: Fences, by August Wilson) help students understand the role of theater in America through the centuries. Speeches by Legendary Leaders include Martin Luther King’s unforgettable “I Have a Dream” speech and Booker T. Washington’s historical Atlanta Exposition Address in addition to Barack Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Address.

What’s New in the Seventh Edition:

-Artworks and historical photos give greater meaning to historical events and selections, such as an artist’s rendition of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and a photo of Civil War devastation in Charleston, South Carolina.

-Twenty new authors, representing diverse cultural backgrounds, increase the number of contemporary authors which is always enjoyable reading.

-Eavesdrop into the romance of John and Abigail Adams by reading their romantic letters. Share the trauma of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a young soldier.

-Four groundbreaking plays will captivate you and help you understand the role of theater in America through the centuries.

-The speeches by legendary leaders, such as Martin Luther King and Booker T. Washington, and have stood the test of time and inspire us today. If you were wishing that you had a copy of President Barack Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Address, you’ll find it here.

Author Biography

JAMES S. LEONARD received his Ph.D. from Brown University, and is Professor of English (and former English Department chair) at The Citadel. He is the editor of Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom (Duke University Press, 1999), coeditor of Authority and Textuality: Current Views of Collaborative Writing (Locust Hill Press, 1994) and Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn (Duke University Press, 1992), and coauthor of The Fluent Mundo: Wallace Stevens and the Structure of Reality

(University of Georgia Press, 1988). He has served as president of the Mark Twain Circle

of America (2010–2012), managing editor of The Mark Twain Annual (since 2004), and editor of the Mark Twain Circular (1987–2008), and is a major contributor to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Poets and Poetry (Greenwood Press, 2006) and American History Through Literature (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005).

 

 

SHELLEY FISHER FISHKIN is Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Stanford University. She is the author, editor, or coeditor of over forty books, including the award-winning Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices (1993), From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America (1988), and Feminist Engagements: Forays into American Literature and Culture (2009), as well as Lighting Out for the Territory (1997), The Oxford Mark Twain (1996), The Historical

Guide to Mark Twain (2002), Mark Twain‘s Book of Animals (2009), The Mark Twain Anthology:Great Writers on his Life and Work (2010), Is He Dead? A Comedy in Three Acts by Mark Twain (2003), People of the Book: Thirty Scholars Reflect on Their Jewish Identity (with Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky) (1996), Listening to Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism (with Elaine Hedges)(1994), and Sport of the Gods and Other Essential Writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar (with David Bradley) (2005). She has also published more than eighty articles, essays, or reviews in publications including American Quarterly, American Literature, Journal of American History, American Literary History, and the New York Times Book Review, and has lectured on American literature in Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea,

Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom,

and throughout the United States. A member of the first class of women to graduate from Yale College, she stayed on at Yale to earn her M.A. in English and her Ph.D. in American Studies. Before her arrival at Stanford, she directed the Poynter Fellowship

in Journalism at Yale and taught American Studies and English at the University

of Texas at Austin, where she chaired the American Studies Department. She co-founded the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society and is a past president of the Mark Twain Circle of America and the American Studies Association.

 

DAVID BRADLEY earned a BA in Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania  in 1972 and a MA in United States Studies at the University of London in 1974. A Professor of English at Temple University from 1976 to 1997, Bradley has been a visiting professor at the San Diego State University, the University of California—San Diego, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Colgate University, the College of William &

Mary, the City College of the City University of New York and the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. He is currently an Associate Professor of Fiction in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon. Bradley has read and lectured extensively in the United States and also in Japan, Korea, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia. He is the author of two novels, South Street (1975) and The Chaneysville Incident (1981) which was awarded the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His non-fiction has appeared in Esquire, Redbook, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker. A recipient of fellowships from the John Simon

Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts His most recent publication is semi-scholarly: The Essential Writings of Paul Laurence Dunbar, which he co-edited with Shelley Fisher Fishkin. His current works in progress include a creative non-fiction book, The Bondage Hypothesis: Meditations on Race, History and America, a novel-in-stories, Raystown, and an essay collection: Lunch Bucket Pieces: New and Selected Creative Nonfiction

 

DANA D. NELSON

received her Ph.D. from Michigan State, and she is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English and American Studies at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of The Word in Black and White: Reading “Race” in American Literature, 1638–1867 (1992), National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men (1998), and Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People (2008) as well as editor of several reprint editions of nineteenth-century American female writers (including Rebecca Rush, Lydia Maria Child, Fanny Kemble, and Frances Butler Leigh). Her teaching interests include comparative American colonial literatures, developing democracy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ethnic and minority literatures, women’s literature, and frontier representations in literature. She has served or is serving on numerous editorial boards, including American Literature, Early American Literature, American Literary History, Arizona Quarterly, and American Quarterly. She is an active member of the Modern Language Association and the American Studies Association. She is currently working on a book that studies developing practices and representations of democracy in the late British colonies and the early United States.

 

JOSEPH CSICSILA is Professor of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University and a specialist in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature and culture. He is the author and/or editor of five books including Canons by Consensus:

Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies (2004), which is the first systematic study of American literature textbooks used by college instructors in the past century, Centenary Reflections on Mark Twain’s No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (2009), and Heretical Fictions: Religion in the Literature of Mark Twain (2010). He has also published numerous articles on such authors as Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, and William Faulkner. Csicsila has served as the editor of Journal of Narrative Theory and is currently book review editor for The Mark Twain Annual.

Table of Contents

The Literature of Early America 1

 

Reading the Historical Context

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (1451–1506)

Letter Describing His First Voyage

THOMAS HARIOT (1560–1621)

FROM A Brief and True Report of the Newfound Land of Virginia Of the Nature and Manners of the People

JOHN WINTHROP (1588–1649) AND ANNE HUTCHINSON (1591–1643)

FROMThe Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton November 1637

THE IROQUOIS LEAGUE

FROM The Constitution of the Five Nations

 

Literature of Early America

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH (1580–1631)

FROM The General History of Virginia:

The Third Book

Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War

WILLIAM BRADFORD (1590–1657),

FROM Of Plymouth Plantation

Chapter I: The Separatist Interpretation of the Reformation in England, 1550–1607

Chapter III: Of Their Settling in Holland, and Their Manner of Living

Chapter IV: Showing the Reasons and Causes of Their Removal

Chapter VII: Of Their Departure from Leyden

Chapter IX: Of Their Voyage

Chapter X: Showing How They Sought Out a Place of Habitation

Chapter XI: The Mayflower Compact

Chapter XII: Narragansett Challenge

Chapter XIV: End of the “Common Course . . .”

Chapter XXIV: Mr. Roger Williams

Chapter XXVIII: The Pequot War

Chapter XXXVI: Wiinslow’s Final Departure

JOHN WINTHROP(1588–1649),

From The Journal of John Winthrop

ANNE BRADSTREET (C. 1612–1672)

The Prologue

Contemplations

The Flesh and the Spirit

The Author to Her Book

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

To My Dear and Loving Husband

A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Public Employment

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet

On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet

[On Deliverance] from Another Sore Fit

Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666

As Weary Pilgrim

EDWARD TAYLOR (C. 1642–1729)

Prologue

FROM Preparatory Meditations

The Reflexion

Meditation 6 (First Series)

Meditation 8 (First Series)

Meditation 38 (First Series)

Meditation 150 (Second Series)

FROM God’s Determinations

The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended

Upon a Spider Catching a Fly

Huswifery

The Ebb and Flow

A Fig for Thee Oh! Death

SAMUEL SEWALL (1652–1730)

The Selling of Joseph

FROM The Diary of Samuel Sewall

MARY ROWLANDSON (C. 1637–1711)

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration

WILLIAM BYRD II (1674–1744)

FROM The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709–1712

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703–1758)

Sarah Pierrepont

FROM A Divine and Supernatural Light

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

 

The Literature of the Eighteenth Century

 

Reading the Historical Context

CORRESPONDENCE

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

Abigail Adams to John Adams

John Adams to Abigail Adams

Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker

THE FEDERALIST/ANTI-FEDERALIST CONTROVERSY

The Federalist No. 1 (Alexander Hamilton)

The Federalist No. 2 (John Jay)

 

Literature of the Eighteenth Century

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706–1790)

FROM The Autobiography

Benjamin Franklin’s Epitaph

FROM The Pennsylvania Gazette

The Witches of Mount Holly

Information to Those Who Would Remove to America

MICHEL-GUILLAUME-JEAN DE CRÈVECOEUR (1735–1813)

FROM Letters from an American Farmer

Letter III (What Is an American?)

Letter IX (Description of Charleston)

THOMAS PAINE (1737–1809)

FROM Common Sense

FROM The American Crisis

THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743–1826)

The Declaration of Independence

FROM Notes on the State of Virginia

FROM Query V: Cascades

FROM Query VI: Productions Mineral, Vegetable and Animal

FROM Query XVII: Religion

FROM Query XVIII: Manners

FROM Query XIX: Manufactures

PHILLIS WHEATLEY (1754?–1784)

On Virtue

To the University of Cambridge, in New England

On Being Brought from Africa to America

On Imagination

To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works

To His Excellency General Washington

PHILIP FRENEAU (1752–1832)

The Power of Fancy

The Hurricane

To Sir Toby

The Wild Honey Suckle

The Indian Burying Ground

On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature

WILLIAM BARTRAM (1739–1823)

FROM Travels through North and South Carolina

SUSANNA HASWELL ROWSON (1762–1824)

Slaves in Algiers

RED JACKET (C. 1750-1830)

The Indians Must Worship the Great Spirit in Their Own Way

The Literature of the Early To Mid-Nineteenth Century

Reading the Historical Context

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879)

On the Constitution and the Union

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS (1813–1861)

FROM Third Joint Debate, at Jonesboro

WOMEN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION, SENECA FALLS, NEW YORK (1848)

Declaration of Sentiments

 

Literature of the Early To Mid-Nineteenth Century

 

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783–1859)

FROM The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

The Author’s Account of Himself

Rip Van Winkle

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

BLACK HAWK (1767–1838)

FROM Black Hawk’s Autobiography

WILLIAM APESS (1798–1839)

Eulogy on King Philip

PENINA MOÏSE (1797–1880)

To Persecuted Foreigners

The Mirror and the Echo

To a Lottery Ticket

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789–1851)

Preface to the Leather-Stocking Tales

FROM The Pioneers

FROM The Deerslayer

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794–1878)

Thanatopsis

To a Waterfowl

To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe

To the Fringed Gentian

The Prairies

Abraham Lincoln

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849)

Sonnet—To Science

To Helen

The City in the Sea

Sonnet—Silence

Lenore

The Raven

Annabel Lee

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Black Cat

The Purloined Letter

FROM “Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne” [A Review]

The Philosophy of Composition

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803–1882)

Nature

Self-Reliance

The Rhodora

Each and All

Concord Hymn

The Problem

Ode

Hamatreya

Give All to Love

Days

Brahma

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS (1806–1867)

January 1, 1828

January 1, 1829

The Lady in the White Dress, I Helped into the Omnibus

MARIA STEWART (1803–1879)

An Address Delivered Before The Afric-American Female

Intelligence Society of America 6

GEORGE MOSES HORTON (1797–1883)

On Liberty and Slavery

The Lover’s Farewell

On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poet’s Freedom

Division of An Estate

Death of an Old Carriage Horse

George Moses Horton, Myself

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804–1864)

Young Goodman Brown

The Birth-Mark

Rappaccini’s Daughter

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819–1891)

Bartleby, the Scrivener

Benito Cereno

The Portent

Shiloh

Malvern Hill

A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight

The House-Top

The Swamp Angel

The College Colonel

The Tuft of Kelp

The Maldive Shark

The Berg

Art

Greek Architecture

LYDIA MARIA CHILD (1802–1880)

The Black Saxons

FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1818–1895)

FROM Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

HENRY DAVID THOREAU(1817–1862)

Civil Disobedience

FROM Walden

I Economy

II Where I Lived, and What I Lived for

XII Brute Neighbors

XVIII Conclusion

They Who Prepare my Evening Meal Below

On Fields O’er Which the Reaper’s Hand Has Passed

Smoke

Conscience

My Life Has Been the Poem

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806–1870)

Grayling; or “Murder Will Out”

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807–1882)

A Psalm of Life

The Arsenal at Springfield

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807–1892)

The Hunters of Men

The Farewell

Barbara Frietchie

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL(1819–1891)

To the Dandelion

FROM A Fable for Critics

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811–1896), FROM Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Preface

Chapter I In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

Chapter VII The Mother’s Struggle

FANNY FERN(1811–1872)

Aunt Hetty on Matrimony

Hints to Young Wives

The Tear of a Wife

Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the “Blue Stocking”

Blackwell’s Island

Blackwell’s Island No. 3

Independence

The Working-Girls of New York

WILLIAM WELLS BROWN (1814–1884)

The Escape

HARRIET ANN JACOBS (1813–1897), FROM Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Chapter I Childhood

Chapter V The Trials of Girlhood

Chapter VI The Jealous Mistress

Chapter X A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life

Chapter XXI The Loophole of Retreat

Chapter XLI Free at Last

JAMES M. WHITFIELD (1822–1871)

America

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865)

To Horace Greeley

Gettysburg Address

Second Inaugural Address

FRANCES E. W. HARPER (1825–1911)

Bury Me in a Free Land

To the Union Savers of Cleveland

Eliza Harris

The Slave Mother

Learning to Read

Aunt Chloe’s Politics

EMMA LAZARUS (1849–1887)

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

The New Colossus

1492

WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892) 1

Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass

Song of Myself

FROM Inscriptions

To You

One’s-Self I Sing

When I Read the Book

I Hear America Singing

Poets to Come

FROM Children of Adam

From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

As Adam, Early in the Morning

Once I Pass’d through a Populous City

FROM Calamus

What Think You I take My Pen In Hand?

I saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

I Hear It Was Charged Against Me

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

FROM Sea-Drift

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

FROM By the Roadside

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

The Dalliance of the Eagles

FROM Drum-Taps

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

A sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim

The Wound-Dresser

FROM Memories of President Lincoln

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

FROM Autumn Rivulets

There Was a Child Went Forth

Sparkles From the Wheel

Passage to India

FROM Whispers of Heavenly Death

A Noiseless Patient Spider

FROM Noon to Starry Night

To a Locomotive in Winter

EMILY DICKINSON (1830–1886)

49 I never lost as much but twice

67 Success is counted sweetest

165 A Wounded Deer—leaps highest

185 “Faith” is a fine invention

210 The thought beneath so slight a film

214 I taste a liquor never brewed

216 Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

241 I like a look of Agony

249 Wild Nights—Wild Nights!

258 There’s a certain Slant of light

280 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

303 The Soul selects her own Society

324 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

328 A Bird came down the Walk

338 I know that He exists

341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes

401 What Soft—Cherubic Creatures

435 Much Madness is divinest Sense

441 This is my letter to the World

449 I died for Beauty—but was scarce

465 I heard a Fly buzz—when I died

520 I started Early—Took my Dog

585 I like to see it lap the Miles

632 The Brain—is wider than the sky

640 I cannot live with You

670 One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted

709 Publication—is the Auction

712 Because I could not stop for Death

764 Presentiment—is that long Shadow—on the Lawn

976 Death is a Dialogue between

986 A narrow Fellow in the Grass

1052 I never saw a Moor

1078 The Bustle in a House

1129 Tell all the truth but tell it slant

1207 He preached upon “Breadth” till it argued him narrow

1463 A Route of Evanescence

1545 The Bible is an antique Volume

1624 Apparently with no surprise

1670 In Winter in my Room

1732 My life closed twice before its close

1755 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

1760 Elysium is as far as to

Letters to T. W. Higginson

 

The Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century

 

Reading the Historical Context

MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS) (1835–1910)

FROM Life on the Mississippi

[Sir Walter Scott and the Southern Character]

ALBION TOURGÉE (1838–1905)

FROM The Invisible Empire

 

Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century

MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS) (1835–1910)

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Story of the Bad Little Boy

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A Salutation-Speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth

The War-Prayer

MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN (1852–1930)

A New England Nun

CHARLES WADDELL CHESNUTT (1858–1932)

The Goophered Grapevine

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837–1920)

Editha

HENRY JAMES (1843–1916)

Daisy Miller: A Study

The Jolly Corner

AMBROSE BIERCE (1842–1914)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860–1935)

The Yellow Wall-Paper

KATE CHOPIN (1851–1904)

The Storm

STEPHEN CRANE (1871–1900)

Black riders came from the sea

In the desert

A god in wrath

I saw a man pursuing the horizon

Supposing that I should have the courage

On the horizon the peaks assembled

A man feared that he might find an assassin

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind

A man said to the universe

A man adrift on a slim spar

The Open Boat

FRANK NORRIS(1870–1902)

A Deal in Wheat

JACK LONDON(1876–1916)

The Law of Life

EDITH WHARTON (1862–1937)

The Other Two

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR(1872–1906)

We Wear the Mask

An Ante-Bellum Sermon

When Malindy Sings

The Colored Soldiers

When Dey ‘Listed Colored Soldiers

Sympathy 1

THEODORE DREISER(1871–1945)

The Lost Phoebe

 

The Literature of the Twentieth Century (1900 to 1945)

 

Reading the Historical Context

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856–1915)

The Atlanta Exposition Address

Literature of the Twentieth Century

W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868–1963)

FROM The Souls of Black Folk

A Litany of Atlanta

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON(1869–1935)

Richard Cory

Cliff Klingenhagen

Miniver Cheevy

How Annandale Went Out

Eros Turannos

Mr. Flood’s Party

ROBERT FROST(1874–1963)

Mending Wall

Home Burial

After Apple-Picking

The Road Not Taken

An Old Man’s Winter Night

Birches

The Oven Bird

For Once, Then, Something

Fire and Ice

Design

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

GERTRUDE SIMMONS BONNIN (ZITKALA SA) (1876–1938)

FROM The School Days of an Indian Girl

CARL SANDBURG(1878–1967)

Chicago

Lost

Graceland

Fog

Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight

WILLA CATHER(1873–1947)

Paul’s Case

ELLEN GLASGOW (1873–1945)

The Shadowy Third

GERTRUDE STEIN(1874–1946)

Susie Asado

Picasso

A Movie

SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876–1941)

I Want to Know Why

JOHN DOS PASSOS (1896–1970)

FROM U.S.A.

Preface

FROM The 42nd Parallel

Proteus 1

FROM 1919

Newsreel XLIII

The Body of an American

FROM The Big Money

Newsreel LXVI

The Camera Eye (50)

FROM U.S.A

Vag

EUGENE O’NEILL(1888–1953)

The Hairy Ape

SUSAN GLASPELL(1876–1948)

Trifles

EZRA POUND(1885–1972)

Portrait d’une Femme

Salutation

A Pact

In a Station of the Metro

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

T. S. ELIOT(1888–1965)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Preludes

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

The Waste Land

Notes on “The Waste Land”

E. E. CUMMINGS(1894–1962)

[in Just-]

[O sweet spontaneous]

[Buffalo Bill’s defunct]

[the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls]

[All in green went my love riding]

[when god lets my body be]

HART CRANE(1899–1932)

Chaplinesque

At Melville’s Tomb

Voyages

FROM The Bridge

To Brooklyn Bridge

The Harbor Dawn

Van Winkle

EDGAR LEE MASTERS(1868–1950)

FROM Spoon River Anthology

Knowlt Hoheimer

Nellie Clark

Petit, the Poet

Anne Rutledge

Lucinda Matlock

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY(1892–1950)

Spring

First Fig

[I shall forget you presently, my dear]

[Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare]

WALLACE STEVENS(1879–1955)

Peter Quince at the Clavier

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

Domination of Black

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

The Snow Man

Anecdote of the Jar

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

The Idea of Order at Key West

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS(1883–1963)

Con Brio

The Young Housewife

Pastoral

Tract

Danse Russe

El Hombre

To a Solitary Disciple

Queenannslace

Portrait of a Lady

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime

The Red Wheelbarrow

Between Walls

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

MARIANNE MOORE(1887–1972)

The Past Is the Present

To a Steam Roller

The Fish

Poetry

A Graveyard

THE NEW NEGRO(1925)

Fog, by John Matheus

White Houses, by Claude McKay

The Black Finger, by Angelina Grimke

The Road, by Helene Johnson

COUNTÉE CULLEN(1903–1946)

Yet Do I Marvel

For a Lady I Know

Incident

From the Dark Tower

A Brown Girl Dead

Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song

JEAN TOOMER(1894–1967)

FROM Cane

Blood-Burning Moon

ZORA NEALE HURSTON(1891?–1960)

John Redding Goes to Sea

THOMAS WOLFE(1900–1938)

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD(1896–1940)

Winter Dreams

ERNEST HEMINGWAY(1899–1961)

In Another Country

WILLIAM FAULKNER(1897–1962)

Barn Burning

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–1967)

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Aunt Sue’s Stories

Question

The New Moon

Mexican Market Woman

I Too

Dream Boogie

Harlem

JOHN STEINBECK (1902–1968)

The Chrysanthemums

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER(1890–1980)

María Concepción

 

The Literature of the Twentieth Century (1945 to Present)

 

Reading the Historical Context

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. (1929–1968)

I Have a Dream

JAMES R. MCDONOUGH (1946– )

FROM Platoon Leader

“Just Like You and Me”

BARACK OBAMA (1961– )

Inauguration Speech

 

Literature of the Twentieth Century

EUDORA WELTY (1909–2001)

Powerhouse

RICHARD WRIGHT(1908–1960)

The Man Who Was Almost a Man

ELIZABETH BISHOP(1911–1979)

A Miracle for Breakfast

The Armadillo

Brazil, January 1, 1502

One Art

ROBERT LOWELL (1917–1977)

Memories of West Street and Lepke

Skunk Hour

For the Union Dead

Will Not Come Back

ANNE SEXTON(1928–1974)

And One for My Dame

The Addict

Us

Rowing

SYLVIA PLATH(1932–1963)

Lady Lazarus

Daddy

W. S. MERWIN (1927– )

Grandfather in the Old Men’s Home

The Drunk in the Furnace

Noah’s Raven

The Dry Stone Mason

Fly

Strawberries

Direction

A. R. AMMONS (1926–2001)

Sight Seed

Motion Which Disestablishes Organizes Everything

The Damned

JAMES BALDWIN (1924–1987)

Sonny’s Blues

FLANNERY O’CONNOR(1925–1964)

Good Country People

BERNARD MALAMUD(1914–1986)

The Magic Barrel

SONIA SANCHEZ (1934– )

the final solution/

to blk/record/buyers

Womanhood

BLACK FIRE(1968)

Neon Diaspora, by David Henderson

For the Truth, by Edward Spriggs

“Oh shit a riot!” by Jacques Wakefield

JUNE JORDAN(1936–2002)

Poem About My Rights

Poem for Guatemala

A New Politics of Sexuality

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON (1940– )

No Name Woman

EDWARD ALBEE (1928– )

The Zoo Story

SAUL BELLOW(1915–2005)

A Silver Dish

N. SCOTT MOMADAY (1934– )

FROM The Way to Rainy Mountain

The Arrowmaker

JOYCE CAROL OATES (1938– )

How I Contemplated the World . .

JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON (1943– )

The Faithful

TIM O’BRIEN (1946– )

FROM The Things They Carried

On the Rainy River 2113

AMY TAN (1952– )

FROM The Joy Luck Club

Half and Half

BOBBIE ANN MASON (1940– )

Shiloh

GLORIA NAYLOR (1950– )

FROM The Women of Brewster Place

Lucielia Louise Turner

LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948– )

The Man to Send Rain Clouds

Coyote Holds a Full House in His Hand

GLORIA ANZALDÚA(1942–2004)

FROM Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

The Homeland, Aztlán

LOUISE ERDRICH (1954– )

FROM Love Medicine

The Red Convertible (1974)

TINA HOWE (1937– )

Painting Churches

THOMAS PYNCHON (1937– )

Entropy

AUGUST WILSON(1945–2005)

Fences

SIMON ORTIZ (1941– )

A Designated National Park

Canyon de Chelly

Final Solution: Jobs, Leaving

GEORGE SAUNDERS (1958– )

Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz

SHERMAN ALEXIE (1966– )

Class

Defending Walt Whitman

 

Reference Works, Bibliographies

Criticism, Literary and Cultural History