The most comprehensive reference on American poetry ever assembled, this encyclopedia includes more than 900 alphabetically arranged entries, contributed by approximately 350 scholars. Written for students and general readers, this set covers poetry from the colonial era to the present and gives special attention to contemporary poets and their works. Multicultural in scope, the Encyclopedia covers poets, genres, critics, poetic terms, and movements. Its entries range from Caribbean to Confessional Poetry, from Dada to Eco-poetics, from Gay and Lesbian Poetry to Literary Magazines, New Formalism, and more.

The most comprehensive reference on American poetry ever assembled, this encyclopedia includes more than 900 alphabetically arranged entries, contributed by approximately 350 scholars. Written for students and general readers, this set covers poetry from the colonial era to the present and gives special attention to contemporary poets and their works. Multicultural in scope, the Encyclopedia covers poets, genres, critics, poetic terms, and movements. Its entries range from Caribbean to Confessional Poetry, from Dada to Eco-poetics, from Gay and Lesbian Poetry to Literary Magazines, New Formalism, and more.

The most comprehensive reference on American poetry ever assembled, this encyclopedia includes more than 900 alphabetically arranged entries, contributed by approximately 350 scholars. Written for students and general readers, the set covers poetry from the colonial era to the present, devoting special attention to contemporary poets and their works. Multicultural in scope, the encyclopedia covers poets, genres, critics, poetic terms, and movements. Its entries range from Caribbean to Confessional Poetry, from Dada to Eco-poetics, from Gay and Lesbian Poetry to Literary Magazines, New Formalism, and more. The most comprehensive reference on American poetry ever assembled, this enormous encyclopedia includes more than 900 alphabetically arranged entries by roughly 350 scholars. Other references on poetry typically cover a particular period, or survey a limited range of authors, or they do not cover poets, and works, and techniques. This encyclopedia surpasses existing works by considering the entire range of American poetry, overviewing major and minor authors, and combining biographical and critical entries with entries on a wide range of topics. Written for students and general readers at a time when poetry is central to the curriculum, the set covers material from the colonial era to the present, devoting special attention to contemporary poets and their works. Multicultural in scope, the encyclopedia provides entries on numerous poets from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It also devotes considerable attention to women poets and to poets who are just beginning to establish their reputations. In addition, it relates American poetry to its social, historical, political, and cultural contexts. The extensive experience of the volume editors and contributors is supplemented by an advisory board of some of the world's most distinguished scholars, including: ; Steven Gould Axelrod ; Paula Bernat Bennett ; Charles Bernstein ; Pattie Cowell ; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ; Donald Marshall ; Marjorie Perloff ; John Shields ; Lorenzo Thomas ; Robert von Hallberg ; And Cheryl Lawson Walker. Among the many poets discussed are: ; Amos Bronson Alcott ; Maya Angelou ; Amiri Baraka ; William Bronk ; Alice Cary ; Billy Collins ; Stephen Crane ; Countee Cullen ; James Dickey ; Emily Dickinson ; Rita Dove ; Bob Dylan ; Peter Everwine ; Robert Frost ; Sandra Gilbert ; Allen Ginsberg ; Dana Gioia ; Robinson Jeffers ; N. Scott Momaday ; And many others. In addition, the Encyclopedia includes entries on such topics as: ; African American Slave Songs ; Agrarian School ; Asian American Poetry ; Beat Poetry ; Black Arts Movement ; Blues ; Chicano Poetry ; Digital Poetry ; Ekphrastic Poetry ; Epic ; Ethnopoetics ; Experimental Poetry and the Avant-Garde ; Feminist Poetics ; Light Verse ; Performance Poetry ; And many others. Features: ; Includes more than 900 alphabetically arranged entries. ; Brings together the work of roughly 350 expert contributors. ; Covers American poetry from the colonial era to the present. ; Includes entries on major canonical poets. ; Highlights the work of poets who are just beginning to establish their reputations. ; Gives full attention to poets from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. ; Notes the achievements of women poets. ; Relates American poetry to its historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. ; In addition to biographical entries, the encyclopedia includes entries on poetic genres, schools, movements, terms, periods, theories, practices, and other topics. ; Includes an alphabetical list of entries. ; Lists entries grouped in topical categories. ; Entries cite works for further reading. ; Entries are fully cross-referenced. ; Provides a selected, general bibliography of broard studies of American poetry. ; Includes a detailed index. Benefits: ; Helps students understand and appreciate the precise and creative use of language. ; Assists students in using poetry to understand social, political, and cultural issues. ; Develops an appreciation for the achievements of poets from diverse cultural groups. ; Serves as a model for student analysis and writing. ; Develops research skills by directing students to additional sources of information. ; Helps students learn to compare and contrast different poetic practices and movements. ; Teaches students terms and concepts central to the critical analysis of poetry and literature. Because poetry is central to the curriculum and is a valuable resource for learning about language, this authoritative encyclopedia will be consulted extensively by high school students and teachers. In addition to school libraries, public libraries need to purchase this work to support student research and to meet the interests of general readers.

Focusing on lyric poetry, Mastery's End looks at important, yet neglected, issues of subjectivity in post-World War II travel literature. Jeffrey Gray departs from related studies in two regards: nearly all recent scholarly books on the literature of travel have dealt with pre-twentieth-century periods, and all are concerned with narrative genres. Gray questions whether the postcolonial theoretical model of travel as mastery, hegemony, and exploitation still applies. In its place he suggests a model of vulnerability, incoherence, and disorientation to reflect the modern destabilizing nature of travel, a process that began with the unprecedented movement of people during and after World War II and has not abated since. What the contemporary discourse concerning displacement, border crossing, and identity needs, says Gray, is a study of that literary genre with the least investment in closure and the least fidelity to ethnic and national continuities. His concern is not only with the psychological challenges to identity but also with travel as a mode of understanding and composition. Following a summary of American critical perspectives on travel from Emerson to the present, Gray discusses how travel, by nature, defamiliarizes and induces heightened awareness. Such phenomena, Gray says, correspond to the tenets of modern poetics: traversing territories, immersing the self in new object worlds, reconstituting the known as unknown. He then devotes a chapter each to four of the past half-century's most celebrated English-speaking, western poets: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, and Derek Walcott. Finally, two multi-poet chapters examine the travel poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Robert Creeley, Lyn Hejinian, Nathaniel Mackey and others.

The ethnically diverse scope, broad chronological coverage, and mix of biographical, critical, historical, political, and cultural entries make this the most useful and exciting poetry reference of its kind for students today. American poetry springs up out of all walks of life; its poems are "maternal as well as paternal...stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine," as Walt Whitman wrote, adding "Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion." Written for high school and undergraduate students, this two-volume encyclopedia covers U.S. poetry from the Colonial era to the present, offering full treatments of hundreds of key poets of the American canon. What sets this reference apart is that it also discusses events, movements, schools, and poetic approaches, placing poets in their social, historical, political, cultural, and critical contexts and showing how their works mirror the eras in which they were written. Readers will learn about surrealism, ekphrastic poetry, pastoral elegy, the Black Mountain poets, and "language" poetry. There are long and rich entries on modernism and postmodernism as well as entries related to the formal and technical dimensions of American poetry. Particular attention is paid to women poets and poets from various ethnic groups. Poets such as Amiri Baraka, Nathaniel Mackey, Natasha Trethewey, and Tracy Smith are featured. The encyclopedia also contains entries on a wide selection of Latino and Native American poets and substantial coverage of the avant-garde and experimental movements and provides sidebars that illuminate key points.

The sea and Great Lakes have inspired American authors from colonial times to the present to produce enduring literary works. This reference is a comprehensive survey of American sea literature. The scope of the encyclopedia ranges from the earliest printed matter produced in the colonies to contemporary experiments in published prose, poetry, and drama. The book also acknowledges how literature gives rise to adaptations and resonances in music and film and includes coverage of nonliterary topics that have nonetheless shaped American literature of the sea and Great Lakes. The alphabetical arrangement of the reference facilitates access to facts about major literary works, characters, authors, themes, vessels, places, and ideas that are central to American sea literature. Each of the several hundred entries is written by an expert contributor and many provide bibliographical information. While the encyclopedia includes entries for white male canonical writers such as Herman Melville and Jack London, it also gives considerable attention to women at sea and to ethnically diverse authors, works, and themes. The volume concludes with a chronology and a list of works for further reading.