What is American poetry? Is there truly such a thing as an American poetic tradition, spanning nearly 400 years from colonial times to the 20th century? This volume is an authoritative survey of the elusive category that is the poetry of the American people. The reference work covers all of the major American poets, from the colonial to the contemporary. Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Adrienne Rich are all included. The editor has also selected a broad sampling of poetry from voices that have not been heard as widely over the years. Here, for the first time, is a thorough collection of 19th- and 20th-century poetry by women, Native Americans, and African Americans. Readers will discover the early 20th-century movement of African-American poetic expression, dubbed the Harlem Renaissance, with such poets as James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Bennett and Langston Hughes.