Uncovers heretofore overlooked influences and connections in the evolution of Frost's poetry

Recognizing that masculine literary tradition can include marginalized male writers as well as canonized female writers and that traditions themselves change over time, the essays in this insightful and coherent collection also explore the investment of the writers, as well as ninetieth- and twentieth-century readers, in canon creation. As it reconstructs conversations between these earlier authors and initiates new dialogues for today’s readers, Soft Canons offers provocative reconceptualizations of American literary and cultural history.

A powerful and persuasive new reading of Frost as a poet deeply engaged with both the literary and public politics of his day.

The Cambridge History of American Poetry offers a comprehensive exploration of the development of American poetic traditions from their beginnings until the end of the twentieth century. Bringing together the insights of fifty distinguished scholars, this literary history emphasizes the complex roles that poetry has played in American cultural and intellectual life, detailing the variety of ways in which both public and private forms of poetry have met the needs of different communities at different times. The Cambridge History of American Poetry recognizes the existence of multiple traditions and a dramatically fluid canon, providing current perspectives on both major authors and a number of representative figures whose work embodies the diversity of America's democratic traditions.

Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambiguity examines Frost's ethical positioning as a poet in the age of modernism. The argument is that Frost constructs his poetry with deliberate formal ambiguity, withholding clear resolutions from the reader. Therefore, the poem itself functions as metaphor, inviting the reader into a participation in constructing meaning. Furthermore, the ambiguity of ethical positioning was intrinsic to Frost himself. Nonetheless, by holding his poetry up to several traditional ethical views -- Rationalist, Theological, Existentialist, Deotological, and Social Ethics -- one may define a congruent ethical pattern in both the poetry and the person.

Moby-Dick's Ishmael and Queequeg share a bed, Janie in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God imagines her tongue in another woman's mouth. And yet for too long there has not been a volume that provides an account of the breadth and depth of queer American literature. This landmark volume provides the first expansive history of this literature from its inception to the present day, offering a narrative of how American literary studies and sexuality studies became deeply entwined and what they can teach each other. It examines how American literature produces and is in turn woven out of sexualities, gender pluralities, trans-ness, erotic subjectivities, and alternative ways of inhabiting bodily morphology. In so doing, the volume aims to do nothing less than revise the ways in which we understand the whole of American literature. It will be an indispensable resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates.

Forty essays from influential scholars and poets offer a fresh, multifaceted assessment of the life and works of Robert Frost.