History of American Poetry

Richard Gray has been Professor or Distinguished Visiting Professor at several universities in the UK and USA, including Essex, Georgia and South Carolina. He is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy and has published over a dozen books on the topic, including the award-winning Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region (1986) and The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography (1994).

• Preface and Acknowledgments x1 The American Poem 1The United States … the Greatest Poem 1The Poem is You 8The Breaking of the New Wood 21Forging the Uncreated Conscience of the Nation 272 Beginnings 39In My Beginning is My End 39The word and the Word: Colonial Poetry 44Towards the Secular: Colonial Poetry 53Writing Revolution: The Poetry of the Emergent Republic 57Across the Great Divide: Poetry of the South and the North 63To Sing the Nation: American Poetic Voices 69To Sing of Freedom: African American Voices 89Looking Before and After: Poetic Voices of Region and Nation 913 The Turn to the Modern: Imagism, Objectivism, and Some Major Innovators 106The Revolution is Accomplished 106The Significance of Imagism 111From Imagism to Objectivism or Dream 115From Imagism to the Redemption of History 128From Imagism to Contact and Community 136From Imagism to Discovery of the Imagination 1414 In Search of a Past: The Fugitive Movement and the Major Traditionalists 153The Precious, the Incommunicable Past 153The Significance of the Fugitives 157Traditionalism and the South 160Traditionalism Outside the South 174Traditionalism, Skepticism, and Tragedy 179Traditionalism, Quiet Desperation, and Belief 185Traditionalism, Inhumanism, and Prophecy 1915 The Traditions of Whitman: Other Poets from Between the Wars 201Make this America for Us! 201Whitman and American Populism 205Whitman and American Radicalism 211Whitman, American Identity, and African American Poetry 217Whitman and American Individualism 224Whitman and American Experimentalism 232Whitman and American Mysticism 2376 Formalists and Confessionals: American Poetry since World War II 250A Sad Heart at the Supermarket 250From the Mythological Eye to the Lonely “I”: A Progress of American Poetry since the War 253Varieties of the Personal: The Self as Dream, Landscape, or Confession 258From Formalism to Freedom: A Progress of American Poetic Techniques since the War 264The Imagination of Commitment: A Progress of American Poetic Themes since the War 270The Uses of Formalism 274The Confessional “I” as Primitive 278The Confessional “I” as Historian 281The Confessional “I” as Martyr 285The Confessional “I” as Prophet 289New Formalists, New Confessionals 2927 Beats, Prophets, and Aesthetes: American Poetry since World War II 302Who Am I? 302Rediscovering the American Voice: The Black Mountain Poets 306Restoring the American Vision: The San Francisco Poets 316Recreating American Rhythms: The Beat Poets 323Resurrecting the American Rebel: African American Poetry 330Reinventing the American Self: The New York Poets 340And the Beat Goes On: American Poetry and Virtual Reality 3518 The Languages of American Poetry and the Language of Crisis: American Poetry into the Twenty-First Century 367What is the Language of American Literature? 367The Actuality of Words: The Language Poets 376The Necessity of Audience: The New Formalists 384Remapping the Nation: Chicano/a and Latino/a Poetry 395Improvising America: Asian American Poetry 418New and Ancient Songs: The Return of the Native American 448Legends of the Fall: American Poetry and Crisis 476Epilogue: What Is an American? The Problem of Literary Nationality 509Index 519