Anne Bradstreet -- Edward Taylor -- Philip Freneau -- Phillis Wheatley -- Joel Barlow -- Francis Scott Key -- Clement Moore -- Fitz-Greene Halleck -- William Cullen Bryant -- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- John Greenleaf Whittier -- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Edgar Allan Poe -- Jones Very -- Henry David Thoreau -- Julia Ward Howe -- James Russell Lowell -- Walt Whitman -- Herman Melville -- Frederick Goddard Tuckerman -- Henry Timrod -- Emily Dickinson -- Emma Lazarus -- Edwin Markham -- Katharine Lee Bates -- Ernest Lawrence Thayer -- Edgar Lee Masters -- Edwin Arlington Robinson -- Stephen Crane -- James Weldon Johnson -- Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Robert Frost -- Amy Lowell -- Gertrude Stein -- Trumbull Stickney -- Adelaide Crapsey -- Carl Sandburg -- Wallace Stevens -- Angelina Weld Grimke -- Mina Loy -- William Carlos Williams -- Ezra Pound -- Elinor Wylie -- H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) -- Robinson Jeffers -- Marianne Moore -- T. S. Eliot -- John Crowe Ransom -- Conrad Aiken -- Claude McKay -- Archibald Macleish -- Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Samuel Greenberg -- Dorothy Parker -- E. E. Cummings -- Charles Reznikoff -- H. Phelps Putnam -- Bessie Smith -- Jean Tomer -- Mark Van Doren -- Louise Bogan -- John Wheelwright -- Stephen Vincent Benet -- Melvin B. Tolson -- Leonie Adams -- Hart Crane -- Allen Tate -- Yvor Winters -- Sterling A. Brown -- Laura Riding -- Kenneth Fearing -- Langston Hughes -- Ogden Nash -- Countee Cullen -- Edwin Denby -- Lorine Niedecker -- Louis Zukofsky -- Stanley Kunitz -- Kenneth Rexroth -- Robert Penn Warren -- W. H. Auden -- Lincoln Kirstein -- Josephine Jacobsen -- George Oppen -- Theodore Roethke -- Charles Olson -- Winfield Townley Scott -- Elizabeth Bishop -- J. V. Cunningham -- Paul Goodman -- Josephine Miles -- Anne Porter -- Robert Johnson -- Jean Garrigue -- Robert Hayden -- Muriel Rukeyser -- David Schubert -- Delmore Schwartz -- Karl Shapiro -- May Swenson -- John Berryman -- Randall Jarrell -- Weldon Kees -- William Stafford -- Ruth Stone o-- Bwendolyn Brooks -- Ruth Herschberger -- Robert Lowell -- Joan Murray -- William Bronk -- Robert Duncan -- Charles Bukowski -- Amy Clampitt -- Barbara Guest -- Howard Nemerov -- Mona Van Duyn -- Richard Wilbur -- Howard Moss -- Anthony Hecht -- Richard Hugo -- Denise Levertov -- James Schuyler -- Louis Simpson -- Donald Justice -- Carolyn Kizer -- Kenneth Koch -- Jack Spicer -- A R. Ammons -- Robert Bly -- Robert Creeley --.Allen Ginsberg -- James Merrill -- Frank O'hara -- W. D. Snodgrass -- David Wagoner -- Lew Welch -- John Ashbery -- Galway Kinnell -- W. S. Merwin -- James Wright -- Donald Hall -- Philip Levine -- Anne Sexton -- John Hollander -- Richard Howard -- Adrienne Rich -- Harry mathews -- Gary Snyder -- Sylvia Plath - Ted Berrigan -- Joseph Ceravolo -- Mark Strand -- Jay Wright -- Russell Edson -- Mary Oliver -- Charles Wright -- Frederick Seidel -- C. K. Williams -- Charles Simic -- Frank Bidart -- Carl Dennis -- Tom Disch -- Fanny How -- Robert Pinsky -- Tom Clark -- Billy Collins -- Bob Dylan -- Robert Hass -- Lyn Hejinian -- Marilyn Hacker -- Linda Gregg -- Ann Lauterbach -- William Matthews -- Sharon Olds -- Ron Padgett -- Louis Gluck -- Michael Palmer -- James Tate -- Douglas Crase -- Paul Violi -- John Koethe -- Bernadette Mayer -- J. D. McClatchy -- Alice Notley -- Kay Ryan -- Terence Winch -- Patti Smith -- Rae Armantrout -- Aaron Fogel -- Jane Kenyon -- Yusef Komunyakaa -- Susan Mitchell -- Molly Peacock -- Bob Perelman -- David Shapiro -- James Cummins -- Rachel Hadas -- Lawrence Joseph -- Heather McHugh -- Lynn Emanuel -- Katha Pollitt -- Charles Bernstein -- Anne Carson o-- Carolyn Forche -- Dana Gioia -- Jorie Graham -- Edward Hirsch -- Rodney Jones -- John Yau.
This collection redefines the great canon of American poetry from its origins in the 17th century right up to the present. It features the work of more than 200 poets, almost three times as many as the 1976 edition. The book includes not only writers born since the previous edition, but also many fine poets overlooked in earlier editions or little known in the past but highly deserving of attention. Many more women and African-American poets are represented, and unexpected figures such as the musicians Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Robert Johnson have a place.--From publisher description..