The Cambridge Companion to American Poets
Cambridge Companions to Literature Series

The Cambridge Companion to American Poets brings together thirty-one essays on some fifty-four American poets, spanning nearly 400 years, from Anne Bradstreet to contemporary performance poetry. This book also examines such movements in American poetry as modernism, the Harlem (or New Negro) Renaissance, 'confessional' poetry, the Black Mountain School, the New York School, the Beats, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. Its reputable host of contributors approach American poetry from perspectives as diverse as the poetry itself. The result is a Companion concise enough to be read with pleasure yet expansive enough to do justice to the many traditions American poets have modified, inaugurated, and made their own.

1. 'The first shall be last': apology and redemption in the work of the first New England poets, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor Charlotte Gordon; 2. Phillis Wheatley Carla Willard; 3. The historical epic, women's poetry, and early American verse Kerry Larson; 4. The first this time: Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier Christoph Irmscher; 5. Ralph Waldo Emerson Mark Scott; 6. Edgar Allan Poe Kevin Hayes; 7. Walt Whitman David S. Reynolds; 8. Melville the poet Robert Faggen; 9. Emily Dickinson Martha Nell Smith; 10. Paul Laurence Dunbar Joanne M. Braxton and Lauri Ramey; 11. Edwin Arlington Robinson Henry Atmore; 12. Robert Frost Mark Richardson; 13. Gertrude Stein Joan Retallack; 14. Wallace Stevens Eleanor Cook; 15. William Carlos Williams Ian Copestake; 16. Ezra Pound Alec Marsh; 17. Marianne Moore Celeste Goodridge; 18. T. S. Eliot and American poetry John Cooper; 19. Hart Crane's visionary company Robert Bernard Haas; 20. The new Negro Renaissance Steven Tracey; 21. Langston Hughes Henry Atmore; 22. Elizabeth Bishop Susan McCabe; 23. Gwendolyn Brooks James Smethurst; 24. The three voices of Robert Lowell Steven Axelrod; 25. The Black Mountain School Alan Golding; 26. Jack Spicer Daniel Katz; 27. Allen Ginsberg: irreverent, reverential, and apocalyptic American poet Jonah Raskin; 28. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and confessional poetry Melanie Waters; 29. 'Street musicians': Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery Andrew Epstein; 30. Adrienne Rich: the poetry of witness Wendy Martin and Annalisa Zox-Weaver; 31. An 'empty prescription': pleasure in contemporary American poetry David Kirby.

Mark Richardson is Professor of English at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. He is the author of The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and his Poetics. He has also edited Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays and Robert Frost in Context (Cambridge, 2014).