Public-domain ebook
Modern American Poetry
Language: en1,545 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Poetry·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #58992.
About this book
This volume is a sweeping anthology that gathers poems from more than a hundred American writers, ranging from the mid‑nineteenth‑century voices of Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s contemporaries, and Walt Whitman’s peers to the modernist experiments of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The opening pages list the original publishers and the poems’ sources, then move into a contents section that arranges the works alphabetically by author, offering a taste of each poet’s range, from the rustic humor of Bret Harte to the stark industrial vision of Carl Sandburg, and from the lyrical intimacy of Robert Frost to the imagist precision of H. D. The anthology is framed by a scholarly preface that situates the collection within the post‑Civil‑War shift in American literary culture, highlighting the transition from genteel “parlor poetry” to a more democratic, vigorous expression.
The voice of this compilation is decidedly eclectic: it captures the formal elegance of nineteenth‑century lyricism, the narrative vigor of frontier ballads, and the fragmented, experimental tone of early twentieth‑century modernism. Readers who enjoy tracing the evolution of American verse, who appreciate the contrast between the measured cadence of Longfellow and the bold brevity of a H. D. cinquain, will find this anthology rewarding. It appeals especially to students of literary history, poetry enthusiasts seeking a broad survey, and anyone curious about how American poets responded to the nation’s rapid social and industrial changes.
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HARPER & BROTHERS—for the selections from Fables for the Frivolous by Guy Wetmore Carryl and Dreams and Dust by Don Marquis.
HARR WAGNER PUBLISHING CO.—for the selections from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller.
HENRY HOLT & COMPANY—for the selections from Wilderness Songs by Grace Hazard Conkling, Portraits and Protests by Sarah N. Cleghorn, A Boy’s Will, North of Boston, and Mountain Interval by Robert Frost; Outcasts in Beulah Land by Roy Helton, Chicago Poems and Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg, These Times by Louis Untermeyer, and Factories by Margaret Widdemer.
The selections from The Complete Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Complete Works of Bret Harte, The Shoes That Danced by Anna Hempstead Branch, Davy and the Goblin by Charles E. Carryl, Grimm Tales Made Gay by Guy Wetmore Carryl, Riders of the Stars and Songs of the Trail by Harry Herbert Knibbs, Poems and Poetic Dramas by William Vaughn Moody, Lyrics of Joy by Frank Dempster Sherman, Poems by Edward Rowland Sill, Sea Garden by “H. D.,” and the quotations from Some Imagist Poets—1916 and Some Imagist Poets—1917 are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, the authorized publishers.
B. W. HUEBSCH—for the selections from A Family Album by Alter Brody, The Vaunt of Man by William Ellery Leonard, The Ghetto and Sun-Up by Lola Ridge, Optimos by Horace Traubel, Growing Pains and Dreams out of Darkness by Jean Starr Untermeyer, and The Hesitant Heart by Winifred Welles.
ALFRED A. KNOPF—for the selections from A Canticle of Pan by Witter Bynner, Colors of Life by Max Eastman, Poems by T. S. Eliot, Asphalt and Other Poems by Orrick Johns, Mushrooms by Alfred Kreymborg, Songs for the New Age by James Oppenheim, Lustra by Ezra Pound, Profiles from China and Body and Raiment by Eunice Tietjens.
THE LAURENTIAN PUBLISHERS—for the poem from Motley Measures by Bert Leston Taylor.
THE LIBERATOR—for a poem by Jean Starr Untermeyer.
LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY—for the selections from Poems and Poems—Third Series by Emily Dickinson.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY—for the selections from Poems by Gladys Cromwell, Youth Riding by Mary Carolyn Davies, The Congo and Other Poems and The Chinese Nightingale by Vachel Lindsay, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed and Pictures of the Floating World by Amy Lowell, Spoon River Anthology and Songs and Satires by Edgar Lee Masters, The Quest by John G. Neihardt, The Man Against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Love Songs and Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale, Bluestone by Marguerite Wilkinson.
ROBERT M. MCBRIDE & COMPANY—for the two poems taken from From the Hidden Way by James Branch Cabell.
THE MANAS PRESS—for the selections from Verse by Adelaide Crapsey.
THOMAS B. MOSHER—for the selections from A Quiet Road and A Wayside Lute by Lizette Woodworth Reese and The Flower from the Ashes by Edith M. Thomas.
THE NEW REPUBLIC—for a poem by Ridgely Torrence.
PAGAN PUBLISHING COMPANY—for two poems from Minna and Myself by Maxwell Bodenheim.
POETRY: A MAGAZINE OF VERSE—for the two poems by Edwin Ford Piper and a sonnet by David Morton.
A. M. ROBERTSON—for the sonnet from The House of Orchids by George Sterling.
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS—for the selections from Poems by Henry Cuyler Bunner, Poems by Eugene Field, The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford, Poems of Sidney Lanier, The Children of the Night and The Town Down the River by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Poems by Alan Seeger.
FRANK SHAY—for the quotation from Figs from Thistles by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY—for the two poems from The Human Fantasy and The Belovèd Adventure by John Hall Wheelock.
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY—for the selections from Ballads of Lost Haven by Bliss Carman, Along the Trail by Richard Hovey, Songs from Vagabondia and More Songs from Vagabondia by Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman, and the poem by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman.
THE SONNET—for Frustrate by Leslie Nelson Jennings.
F. A. STOKES COMPANY—for the selections from War Is Kind by Stephen Crane, Grenstone Poems by Witter Bynner, and Poems by a Little Girl by Hilda Conkling.
STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY—for the poem from Monday Morning by James Oppenheim.
VANITY FAIR—for “Wild Swans” and a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS—for selections from Young Adventure by Stephen Vincent Benét and The Burglar of the Zodiac by William Rose Benét.
THE YALE REVIEW—for “The Onset” by Robert Frost.
For several suggestions toward the preparation of this revised edition I am especially indebted to Professors Percy H. Boynton, John Livingston Lowes, Fred Lewis Pattee and Floyd Dell. This acknowledgment is a slight expression of my gratitude as well as a record of my obligation.
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