A comprehensive overview of America's vast poetic heritage, Three Centuries of American Poetry features the work of some 150 of our nation's finest writers. It includes selections from Anne Bradstreet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and Gertrude Stein, as well as significant works of lesser-known American poets. From the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to the Romantic Era and the Gilded and Modern Ages, this unrivaled anthology also presents a memorable array of rare ballads, songs, hymns, spirituals, and carols that echo through our nation's history. Highlights include Native American poems, African American writings, and the works of Quakers, colonists, Huguenots, transcendentalists, scholars, slaves, politicians, journalists, and clergymen. These discerning selections demonstrate that the American canon of poetry is as diverse as the nation itself, and constantly evolving as we pass through time. Most important, this collection strongly reflects the peerless stylings that mark the American poetic experience as unique. Here, in one distinguished volume, are the many voices of the New World.

A collection of poems written by 150 American authors from 1620 to 1923.

Prose and poetry selections from the Colonial Period and National Period.

One should never assume that the narrator in a poem is expressing views identical to the author’s. “For words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within,” wrote Tennyson. Autobiographical elements tend to be so mixed in with the fictional that lines blur. Bazyn’s revolving carousel of poetic “I’s” includes an egotist who makes fun of his arrogance; a baby confused by his wobbly surroundings; the simple joys of a childhood Christmas; youth’s dilemma at forging a vocation; the peculiar circumstances surrounding one’s first love; reminiscences of a recent class reunion; a period of self-examination following the death of a neighbor; anxiously awaiting a monogrammed invitation; lessons gleaned from closely inspecting nature; exhibiting faith in a secular metropolis; dreaming of a technician’s utopia; and the frailty and ragged edges of old age. The narrator is, by turns, nostalgic, uneasy, speculative, forlorn, elated, discombobulated—representing, as he does, different stages of life, personality types, and psychological moods. Bazyn’s language can be mysterious, his sentences follow a winding course, his stanzas end abruptly. Bewitching black-and-white photos accent and enhance each poem’s metaphors. As you gaze into this verbal/visual mirror, likenesses of the hidden self emerge and take on unexpected shapes.

W. E. B. Du Bois is the founding figure of the sociological study of the Black Church. His discussion of the six functions of Philadelphia’s Black Church in The Philadelphia Negro (1899) represented an early example of a “functional analysis” of a religious group. In The Negro Church (1903), he integrated the findings from religious census data, denominational statistics, small area surveys, ethnographic fieldwork, and historical studies to paint a picture of the vibrant role the Black Church played in the African American community. Du Bois discusses the Black Church in three of the essays included in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), other sociological essays and several Atlanta University Conference annual reports. Additionally, Du Bois’ perspective on the Black Church and the role of religion in the African American community can be gleaned from various poetic works, prayers, and editorials. W.E.B. Du Bois and the Sociological Study of the Black Church and Religion, 1897–1914 showcases a representative sample of classic studies on the Black Church and religion by a pioneer of American sociology.