WR153: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry

Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject.

Considered the most important poem of the twentieth century, The Waste Land is an oblique and fascinating view of the hopelessness and confusion of purpose in modern Western civilization.

Different as they were as poets, Wallace Stevens, E. E. Beleaguered Poets and Leftist Critics closely examines the dynamics of these responses: what these four poets wrote; what they believed politically and aesthetically; how critics reviewed their work; how these poets reacted to that criticism and to the broader milieu of leftism.

Langston Hughes was one of the most important American writers of his generation, and one of the most versatile, producing poetry, fiction, drama, and autobiography. In this innovative study, R. Baxter Miller explores Hughes's life and art to enlarge our appreciation of his contribution to American letters.