The Heart Of American Poetry

Description: An acclaimed poet and our greatest champion for poetry offers an inspiring and insightful new reading of the American tradition We live in unsettled times. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions of reconnecting with one another and with what's best in us. In this landmark new book from Library of America Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew from Anne Bradstreet's The Author to Her Book and Phillis Wheatley's To S. M. a Young African Painter on seeing his Works to Garrett Hongo's Ancestral Graves Kahuku and Joy Harjo's Rabbit Is Up to Tricks exploring how these poems have sustained his own life and how they might uplift our diverse but divided nation. This is a personal book about American poetry writes Hirsch but I hope it is more than a personal selection. I have chosen forty poems from our extensive archive and songbook that have been meaningful to me part of my affective life my critical consideration but I have also tried to be cognizant of the changing playbook in American poetry which is not fixed but fluctuating ever in flow to pay attention to the wider consideration the appreciable reach of our literature. This is a book of encounters and realizations.
Title: The Heart Of American Poetry
Barcode: 9781598537260
Publication Date: 4/19/2022