Sixteen dark and vivid tales by great satirist: "A Horseman in the Sky," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "Chicakamauga," "A Son of the Gods," "What I Saw of Shiloh," more. Note.

Published to coincide with the start of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, this new collection of important short works has been compiled by an expert on Civil War literature. Contributors include many of the most famous authors of the era: Whitman, Melville, Longfellow, Bierce, Alcott, Twain, and Whittier.

A superb selection of poems from both sides of the American Civil War features more than 75 inspired works by Melville, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Whitman, and many others.

Compiled by an expert on Civil War literature, this anthology offers an outstanding selection of short works. Includes stories and poems by Whitman, Melville, Longfellow, Bierce, Alcott, Twain, Whittier, and many others.

In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces. Fahs mines these rich but long-neglected resources to recover the diversity of the war's political and social meanings. Instead of narrowly portraying the Civil War as a clash between two great, white armies, popular literature offered a wide range of representations of the conflict and helped shape new modes of imagining the relationships of diverse individuals to the nation. Works that explored the war's devastating impact on white women's lives, for example, proclaimed the importance of their experiences on the home front, while popular writings that celebrated black manhood and heroism in the wake of emancipation helped readers begin to envision new roles for blacks in American life. Recovering a lost world of popular literature, The Imagined Civil War adds immeasurably to our understanding of American life and letters at a pivotal point in our history.

Mainstream American poetry of the 1950s has long been dismissed as deliberately indifferent to its cultural circumstances. In this penetrating study, Edward Brunner breaks the placid surface of the hollow decade to reveal a poetry sharply responsive to issues of its time. Cold War Poetry considers the fifties poem as part of a dual cultural project: as proof of the competency of the newly professionalized poet and as a user-friendly way of initiating a newly educated, upwardly mobile postwar audience into high culture. Brunner revisits Richard Wilbur, Randall Jarrell, and other acknowledged leaders of the period as well as neglected writers such as Rosalie Moore, V. R. Lang, Katherine Hoskins, Melvin B. Tolson, and Hyam Plutzik. He also examines the one-sided authority of the (male-dominated) book review process, the ostracizing of female and minority poets, poetic fads such as the ubiquitous sestina, and the power of the classroom anthology to establish criteria for reading. Attributing the gradual change in poetic style during the 1950s to the slow collapse of the authority of the state, Brunner shows how a secretive, anxious poetics developed in the shadow of a disabled government. He recontextualizes the much-maligned domestic verse of the 1950s, reading its shift toward the private sphere and the recurrent image of the child as a reflection of the powerlessness of the post-nuclear citizen. Through a close examination of poetry written about the Bomb, he delineates how poets registered their growing sense of cosmic disorder in coded language, resorting to subterfuge to continue their critique in the face of sanctions levied against those who questioned government policies. Brilliantly decoding the politics embedded in the poetry of an ostensibly apolitical time, Cold War Poetry provides a powerful rereading of a pivotal decade.

Writers on both sides of the American Civil War “brought to the crisis” (in editor J. D. McClatchys’ words) “poetry’s unique ability to stir the emotions, to freeze the moment, to sweep the scene with a panoramic lens and suddenly swoop in for a close-up of suffering or courage.” This vibrant collection brings together the most memorable and enduring work inspired by the conflict: the masterpieces of Whitman and Melville, Sidney Lanier on the death of Stonewall Jackson, the anti-slavery poems of Longfellow and Whittier, the front-line narratives of Henry Howard Brownell and John W. De Forest, the anthems of Julia Ward Howe and James Ryder Randall. Grief, indignation, pride, courage, patriotic fervor, ultimately reconciliation and healing: the poetry of the Civil War evokes unforgettably the emotions that roiled America in its darkest hour. About the American Poets Project Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.

Mirroring the structure of a quilt, this volume of poems are built in three layers, representing biblical/spiritual reference, musical reference, and references to sewing/quilting itself. These are the poems of American slavery."--

This book explores the things which united, rather than divided, poets during the English Civil Wars, focusing less on conflicts between 'Cavaliers' and 'Roundheads' than on the friendships and shared literary enthusiasms of men of various political allegiance. Includes new readings of the early verse of John Milton and Andrew Marvell.

A detailed account of Herman Melville's life during the Civil War, as well as study of his war epic, Battle-Pieces.