American Literature, Volume II

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College. Among his many publications is a monograph on American literary and cultural criticism, 1900-1945, in The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 5 (2003). He is a co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (2nd ed., 2010), and, with Sylvan Barnet, he has co-authored a number of books on literature and composition. His recent publications include essays on Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Shakespeare, Edith Wharton, and the painter Mark Rothko.  Alice McDermott is the author of the forthcoming novel Someone and six previous novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. McDermott lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.  Lance E. Newman is Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where he teaches Early American Literature, Environmental Literature, and Creative Writing. He has also worked as a river guide for more than two decades, leading rafting trips in Southeastern Utah and in Grand Canyon. He is the author of The Grand Canyon Reader (University of California Press, 2011) and Our Common Dwelling: Henry Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and the Class Politics of Nature (Palgrave, 2005). With Joel Pace and Chris Keonig-Woodyard, he co-edited Transatlantic Romanticism: An Anthology of British, American, and Canadian Literature, 1767-1867 (Longman, 2006). He co-produced the documentary film Canyonlands: Edward Abbey and the Great American Desert (2011) with Roderick Coover. Newman’s poems have appeared in many print and web magazines, and he is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Come Kanab (Dusi-e/chaps Kollectiv, 2007) and 3by3by3 (Beard of Bees, 2010), both available free on the Web.  Hilary E. Wyss is Hargis Professor of American Literature at Auburn University, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. She is the author of over a dozen articles and book chapters as well as three books, including English Letters and Indian Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 1750-1830 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012);  Early Native Literacies in New England: a Documentary and Critical Anthology (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008, co-edited with Kristina Bross); and Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000). She has won teaching awards at Auburn University as well as national research grants to support her work.  She has served on the editorial board of the journal Early American Literature and was most recently the President of the Society of Early Americanists.

• Part One: American Literature at the End of the Nineteenth CenturyTo the Reader  Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835-1910)Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras CountyFenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses  Context and Response: Artemus Ward, from Artemus Ward (His Travels) Among the Mormons  Bret Harte (1836-1902)The Outcasts of Poker Flat  W. D. Howells (1837-1920)Editha  Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)ChickamaugaThe Devil’s Dictionary: selections  Context and Response: The poetry of Dorothy Parker  William James (1842-1910) Pragmatism  Henry James (1843-1916) The Pupil  Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story          Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)The New Colossus  Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)A White Heron  Kate Chopin (1850-1904)Désirée’s Baby  The Storm  Mary E Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)The Revolt of “Mother”  Booker T. Washington (1856?-1915).Up From Slavery: Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address  Context and Response: Olaudah Equiano, Excerpt from Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself             Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932)The Sheriff’s Children  Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)Under the Lion’s Paw  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)The Yellow Wall-paper  Edith Wharton (1862-1937)The Other Two  Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton) (1865-1914)  Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian  W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963).The Souls of Black Folk: Chapter III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others  Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)Old Rogaum and His Theresa           Stephen Crane (1871-1900)An Experiment in Misery An Episode of WarWar Is Kind  Jack London (1876-1916)To Build a Fire  Gallery 1: The South Since ReconstructionFrederick Douglass: The Future of the NegroGeorge Washington Cable: The Freedman’s Case in Equity (excerpt)Henry W. Grady: The New South (excerpt)U.S. Supreme Court: Plessy v. Ferguson (excerpt)Pauli Murray: Proud Shoes (excerpt)Marion Post Wolcott, Entrance to a Movie House, Mississippi DeltaH. L. Mencken: The Sahara of the Bozart (excerpt)Lizzie Woodworth Reese: A War Memory (1865)Donald Davidson: A Mirror for Artists (excerpt)Arthur Rothstein, Southern Movie Theater      Part Two: Modern American LiteratureTo the Reader  Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)Lucinda MatlockDavis Matlock  Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)Richard CoryMiniver CheevyEros Turannos  James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) Lift Every Voice and SingO Black and Unknown BardsImage: James Weldon Johnson  Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)   SympathyWe Wear the Mask  Willa Cather (1873-1947)Paul’s Case  Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)The Gentle Lena  Amy Lowell (1874-1925)The Captured GoddessVenus TransiensMadonna of the Evening FlowersSeptember, 1918New Heavens for OldThe Taxi  Robert Frost (1874-1963)The PastureMending WallHome BurialAfter Apple-PickingThe Wood-PileThe Road Not TakenBirches“Out, Out–“ Fire and IceNothing Gold Can StayStopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningDesert PlacesDesign Neither out Far nor in Deep  Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)Winesburg, Ohio: HandsImage: Sherwood Anderson  Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)Trifles  Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)Chicago  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)The Snow ManSunday MorningAnecdote of the JarThirteen Ways of Looking at a BlackbirdThe Death of a SoldierThe Idea of Order at Key WestOf Modern PoetryThe Plain Sense of Things  William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)The Young HousewifePortrait of a LadySpring and AllTo ElsieThe Red WheelbarrowDeathThis Is Just to SayThe Dance (“In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess”)Landscape with the Fall of Icarus  Ezra Pound (1885-1972)Portrait d’une FemmeA PactIn a Station of the MetroThe River-Merchant's Wife: A LetterThe Cantos: I (“And then went down to the ship”)  H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)OreadLedaHelen  Marianne Moore (1887-1972)PoetryA GraveTo a Snail  John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)Piazza Piece  T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.The Waste LandGerontionThe Hollow MenFour Quartets: Burnt Norton  Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)The Emperor Jones  Claude McKay (1889-1948)If We Must DieAmerica  Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)Flowering Judas  Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)The Gilded Six-Bits  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)RecuerdoI Think I Should Have Loved You Presently[I, being born a woman]Apostrophe to ManI Too beneath Your Moon, Almighty SexSpringI Forgot for a Moment  Context and Response: The poetry of Lisel Mueller  Archibald Macleish (1892-1982)Ars Poetica  Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)General Review of the Sex Situation.  e.e. cummings (1894-1962)in Just-- Buffalo Bill’sthe Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls.“next to of course god america I”if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) havesomewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyondanyone lived in a pretty how town  Jean Toomer (1894-1967)Georgia DuskFern  F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)Babylon Revisited  Louise Bogan (1897-1970)Medusa  William Faulkner (1897-1962)That Evening Sun  Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber  Context and Response: Pío Baroja, excerpt from The Chasm  Hart Crane (1899-1932)At Melville's TombVoyages: I (“Above the fresh ruffles of the surf”)III (“Infinite consanguinity it bears-”)V (“Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime”)The Bridge: Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge  Allen Tate (1899-1979)Ode to the Confederate Dead  Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989)He Was a ManBreak of DayBitter Fruit of the Tree  Langston Hughes (1902-1967)The Negro Speaks of RiversMother to SonThe Weary BluesThe SouthRuby BrownLet America Be America AgainPoet to PatronBallad of the LandlordToo BlueTheme for English BPoet to BigotI, Too  Countee Cullen (1903-1946)Yet Do I MarvelIncident  Richard Wright (1908-1960)Long Black SongImage: Negro Tenant Farmer  Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)Effort at Speech Between Two PeoplePoem  Gallery 2: American Writers and the Great DepressionFranklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (excerpt)Mary Heaton Vorse, School for Bums (excerpt)Anonymous, Letter to Mr. and Mrs. RooseveltRobert Johnson, Cross Road BluesThomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again (excerpt)Alfred Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties (excerpt)Agnes Smedley, China Fights Back (excerpt)Kenneth Fearing, Devil’s DreamJohn Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (excerpt)Dorothea Lange, Mexican Field Worker’s Home, CaliforniaWoody Guthrie, This Land Is Your LandDorothea Lange, The Mochida Family      Part Three: American Prose Since 1945To the Reader  Eudora Welty (1909-2001)A Worn Path                    Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  Context and Response: Carson McCullers, from The Member of the Wedding  John Cheever (1912-1982)The Sorrows of Gin  Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)Battle Royal  Grace Paley (1922-2007)The Loudest Voice  James Baldwin (1924-1987)Notes of a Native Son  Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)Revelation  Toni Morrison (b. 1931)Recitatif  John Updike (1932-2009)Separating  Philip Roth (b. 1933)Defender of the Faith  Context and Response: Saul Bellow, excerpt from Herzog  Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)Dutchman  Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)Where are you going, where have you been?  Raymond Carver (1938-1988)Cathedral  Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)The Lesson  Terrance McNally (b. 1939)Andre’s Mother  Alice Walker (b. 1944)Everyday Use  Tim O’Brien (b. 1946)The Things They Carried  Mark Helprin (b. 1947)White Gardens  Leslie Marmon Silko (b. 1948)Lullaby  Edward P. Jones (b. 1951)Blindsided  Amy Tan (b. 1952)Two Kinds  Louise Erdrich (b. 1954)The Red Convertible  David Henry Hwang (b. 1957)The Sound of a Voice  Jhumpa Lahiri (b. 1967)Hell-Heaven  Gallery 3: Post-Modernism Carl Andre, Equivalent VII; Frank Gehry, Walt Disney Concert Hall; Michael Heizer, Levitated MassFredric Jameson, Postmodernism and the Consumer Society (excerpt)Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans: 4; Batman and the Joker; Madonna at Super Bowl XLVIJonathan Franzen, On Rainer Maria RilkeCindy Sherman, UntitledDiane Williams, Human BeingCharles Bernstein, thinking i think i thinkMitch Stevens, OMG! I just got born!Alan Kirby, The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond (excerpt)Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans; Mark Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test; Jeff Koons, New Hoover Convertibles  Part Four: American Poetry Since World War IITo the Reader  Robert Penn Warren (1905—1989)Bearded OaksMortal Limit   Theodore Roethke (1908—1963) Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau SchwartzeMy Papa’s WaltzThe WakingNight CrowI Knew a WomanIn a Dark Time  Charles Olson (1910—1970) Maximus, to Himself                          Elizabeth Bishop (1911—1979)The FishSestinaIn the Waiting RoomThe MooseOne Art  Robert Hayden (1913—1980)Homage to the Empress of the BluesThose Winter SundaysFrederick Douglass     William Stafford (1914-1993)Traveling Through the Dark  Randall Jarrell (1914—1965)               The Death of the Ball Turret GunnerThe Woman at the Washington Zoo  John Berryman (1914—1972)Dream Songs (excerpts)14 ("Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so") 29 ("There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart")40 ("I’m scared a lonely. Never see my son")45 ("He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back") 385 ("My daughter’s heavier. Light leaves are flying")  Robert Lowell (1917—1977)Mr. Edwards and the SpiderMemories of West Street and LepkeSkunk HourNight SweatFor the Union Dead  Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)We Real CoolMartin Luther King, Jr.  Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)Constantly Risking Absurdity  Robert Duncan (1919—1988)Often I Am Permitted to Return to a MeadowInterrupted Forms  Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)Years-EndLove Calls Us to the Things of This World  James Dickey (1923-1997)Drowning with OthersThe Heaven of Animals  Mitsuye Yamada (b. 1923)To the Lady  Denise Levertov (1923-1997)In MindSeptember 1961What Were They LikeZeroing In  A. R. Ammons (1926-2001)Corsons Inlet                James Merrill (1926—1995)The Broken Home   Robert Creeley (1926-2005)For LoveThe Messengers  Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)Howl  Frank O’Hara (1926—1966)To The HarbormasterThe Day Lady Died  Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)The Porcupine  John Ashbery (b. 1927)IllustrationThe Lament Upon the Waters  W. S. Merwin (b. 1927) For the Anniversary of My DeathFor a Coming Extinction      James Wright (1927—1980)Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, OhioTo the Evening Star: Central MinnesotaA Blessing              Philip Levine (b. 1928)Starlight                 Anne Sexton (1928—1974)The Truth the Dead KnowSylvia’s Death  Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)Storm WarningsDiving into the Wreck  Gary Snyder (b. 1930)RiprapAugust on Sourdough, A Visit from Dick BrewerRipples on the Surface  Sylvia Plath (1932—1963)Morning SongLady LazarusArielDaddy  Linda Pastan  (b. 1932)Marks  Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)A Poem for Black Hearts  Mary Oliver (b. 1935)The Black SnakeHawk  Marge Piercy (b. 1936)A Work of Artifice  Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)In the inner city               Michael S. Harper (b. 1938)               Dear John, Dear ColtraneMartin’s Blues“Bird Lives”: Charles Parker in St. Louis  Frank Bidart (b. 1939)   Self-Portrait, 1969  Billy Collins (b. 1941) SonnetThe Names  Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004)To live in the Borderlands means you  Joseph Bruchac III (b. 1942)Ellis Island  Sharon Olds (b. 1942)Rites of PassageThe Victims  Dave Smith (b. 1942) Tide Pools  Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943)Nikki-Rosa  Louise Glück (b. 1943)The Drowned ChildrenGretel in Darkness  Kay Ryan (b. 1945)  A Certain Kind of EdenHome to Roost  Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)Facing  It  C. D. Wright (b. 1949) ToursPersonals  Jorie Graham (b. 1950) Sea-Blue Aubade  Joy Harjo (b. 1951)Call It FearWhite Bear Eagle Poem  Andrew Hudgins (b. 1951) Death and Doom  Jimmy Santiago Baca (b. 1952)Cloudy Day  Rita Dove (b. 1952)DaystarAdolescence–IAdolescence–IIStraw HatMissing  Judith Ortiz Cofer (b. 1952)My Father in the Navy  Alberto Rios (b. 1952)Wet CampAdvice to a First Cousin  Mark Doty (b. 1953) Golden RetrievalsAt the Gym  Aurora Levins Morales (b. 1954)Child of the Americas  Lorna Dee Cervantes (b. 1954)Refugee Ship                Cathy Song (b. 1955)The White PorchChinatownHeaven  Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)The GiftMnemonicThis Room and Everything in It  Martin Espada (b. 1957)Bully  Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)                   On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City  Gallery 4: Americas Sings the Blues: A Collection of Songs Child with Tambourine Accompanying Guitarist, 1930sW. C. Handy: St. Louis BluesBessie Smith: Thinking BluesRobert Johnson: Walkin’ BluesW.H. Auden: Funeral BluesJohnny Cash: Folsom Prison BluesFolsom State Prison, cell door, 1960s Merle Haggard: Working Man BluesLinda Pastan: Mini BluesAllen Ginsberg: Father Death BluesCharles Wright: Laguna BluesMarilyn Chin: We Are Americans Now, We Live in the TundraSherman Alexie: Reservation BluesIndian photographing tourist photographing Indians, Crow Fair, Montana, 1991Arrested Development: Tennessee  ChronologyCredits            Index  Map of the United States