CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
PART ONE: FIRST-GENERATION MODERNISMS
Introduction
NATIVE-AMERICAN SONGS AND POETRY
Song of the Crows [chippewa]
Love-Charm Song [chippewa]
The Approach of the Storm [chippewa]
Song of the Captive SiouxWoman
As my eyes search the prairie [chippewa]
You Have No Horses [teton sioux]
Arrow Song [chippewa]
The Rising of the Buffalo Men [osage]
Song to the Pleiades [pawnee]
NATIVE-AMERICAN GHOST DANCE SONGS
Father, Have Pity on Me
My Children,When at First I Liked theWhites
When I Met Him Approaching
My Son, LetMe Grasp Your Hand
The Spirit Host Is Advancing, They Say
He’Yoho’Ho! He’Yoho’Ho!
I’Yehe! My Children—Uhi’Yeye’heye!
SONGS OF DISPLACEMENT, MIGRATION, AND WORK I
JINSHAN GE/SONGS OF GOLD MOUNTAIN
I have walked to the very ends of the earth
Where is my husband now?
My loved one is far away
Sons and grandsons are dearest to one’s heart
I’ve returned to Hong Kong from America
With a mere glance at the fur coat
School lets out for the summer
I married an emancipated woman
In all earnestness, I speak to all my sisters
A man’s ambition is to conquer the world
I’m sixty, this autumn
Face haggard, turning yellow and puffy
A green mansion is a place of filth and shame
HAWAIIAN PLANTATION WORK SONGS
Dekasegi wa kuru kuru/The laborers keep on coming
Joyaku wa kirerushi/The contract is over and yet
Sodo okoshite/If we can get married
In the rush at pau hana
I hate hole hole work
With one woven basket
Should I return to Japan?
JAPANESE IMMIGRANT POETRY
Day of vast dreaming
Family treasures
With eyes filled with tears
Once a Meiji voice
Streamers of farewell
My island spirit
Loud waves up and down
Just for a while
Eager to become
A barren grassland
America . . . then
Issei’s history—
JEWISH LABOR POETRY
Memorial to Triangle Fire Victims Morris Rosenfeld
The Uprising of the 20,000
WILLA CATHER (1873–1947)
Prairie Spring
Macon Prairie
ALEXANDER POSEY (1873–1908)
Ode to Sequoyah
Hotgun on the Death of Yadeka Harjo
LOLA RIDGE (1873–1941)
The Fifth-Floor Window
Phyllis
Morning Ride
Stone Face
ROBERT FROST (1874–1963)
The Tuft of Flowers
The Pasture
Mending Wall
The Death of the Hired Man
Home Burial
After Apple-Picking
The Wood-Pile
The Road Not Taken
Birches
The Oven Bird
Fire and Ice
Dust of Snow
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Acquainted with the Night
Desert Places
Design
Directive
PROSE
The Figure a Poem Makes
AMY LOWELL (1874–1925)
Aubade
The Captured Goddess
The Taxi
The Letter
Venus Transiens
A Decade
Bath
from Guns as Keys: And the Great Gate Swings
The Weathervane Points South
Vernal Equinox
September, 1918
Dissonance
TRANSLATIONS AND ADAPTATIONS
In Time of War
A Poet’s Wife
Moon Haze
Nuance
Vicarious
Afterglow
The Retreat of Hsieh Kung
The Lonely Wife
Together We Know Happiness
Vespers
PROSE
from Some Imagist Poets
Preface
GERTRUDE STEIN (1874–1946)
Picasso
Susie Asado
Preciosilla
Guillaume Apollinaire
from Tender Buttons
Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson
George Hugnet
from Four Saints in Three Acts
PROSE
from Composition as Explanation
TRUMBULL STICKNEY (1874–1904)
Mnemosyne
Live blindly and upon the hour
The melancholy year is dead with rain
Mt. Lykaion
Dramatic Fragment 5
ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON (1875–1935)
I Sit and Sew
You! Inez!
YONE NOGUCHI (1875–1947)
Lines
In Japan Beyond
from Japanese Hokkus
1 (‘‘Suppose the stars’’)
16 (‘‘Are the fallen stars’’)
61 (‘‘Like a cobweb hung upon the tree’’)
68 (‘‘Oh, how cool—’’)
AMEEN RIHANI (1876–1940)
It Was All for Him
Lilatu Laili
LUIS LLORENS TORRES (1876–1944)
El patito feo/The Ugly Duckling
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY (1878–1914)
The Witch
November Night
Release
Susanna and the Elders
Languor After Pain
The GuardedWound
NightWinds
Amaze
Madness
The Warning
Laurel in the Berkshires
Niagara
The Pledge
On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees
The Sun-Dial
Song
CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967)
Chicago
Fog
Among the Red Guns
Grass
Jazz Fantasia
VACHEL LINDSAY (1879–1931)
General William Booth Enters into Heaven
Buddha
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
WALLACE STEVENS (1879–1955)
Sunday Morning
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
The Death of a Soldier
Anecdote of the Jar
Gubbinal
The Snow Man
Bantams in Pine-Woods
The OrdinaryWomen
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
O Florida, Venereal Soil
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
The Idea of Order at Key West
Connoisseur of Chaos
Of Modern Poetry
Large Red Man Reading
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Of Mere Being
ANGELINA WELD GRIMKE´ (1880–1959)
El Beso
The Black Finger
The Want of You
Dawn
Dusk
Little Grey Dreams
Tenebris
Grass Fingers
A Mona Lisa
Fragment
GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON (ca. 1880–1966)
The Heart of a Woman
Motherhood
Common Dust
Prejudice
The Suppliant
Escape
The Black Runner
H. T. TSIANG [HSI-TSENG CHIANG] (1880–1971)
Shantung
WITTER BYNNER (1881–1968)
Snake Dance
JESSIE REDMON FAUSET (1882–1961)
Oriflamme
Words! Words!
Touche´
La Vie C’est la Vie
MINA LOY (1882–1966)
Love Songs to Joannes
Brancusi’s Golden Bird
Gertrude Stein
ANNE SPENCER (1882–1975)
At the Carnival
Before the Feast of Shushan
White Things
Lady, Lady
KAHLIL GIBRAN [JUBRAN KHALIL JUBRAN] (1883–1931)
The Fox
JAMIL B. HOLWAY (1883–1946)
Throbbings
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883–1963)
The Young Housewife
Chinese Nightingale
Apology
Tract
El Hombre
Danse Russe
Portrait of a Lady
Queen-Anne’s-Lace
The Great Figure
Spring and All
The Rose
To Elsie
The Red Wheelbarrow
Brilliant Sad Sun
This Is Just to Say
The Locust Tree in Flower
To a Poor Old Woman
The Yachts
Between Walls
These
The Dance
from Paterson
The Descent
The Ivy Crown
Tribute to Neruda, the Poet Collector of Seashells
Ho Chih-Chang
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
PROSE
from Spring and All
SARA TEASDALE (1884–1933)
The Sanctuary
Effigy of a Nun
Day’s Ending
EZRA POUND (1885–1972)
A Virginal
The Return
Salutation
A Pact
In a Station of the Metro
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
from The Cantos
Canto I
Canto XIII
Canto XLV
from Canto LXXXI
Canto CXVI
Canto CXX
PROSE
from A Retrospect
ELINOR WYLIE (1885–1928)
The Eagle and the Mole
Wild Peaches
Sanctuary
Velvet Shoes
Drowned Woman
Let No Charitable Hope
Self-portrait
Where, O,Where?
Felo De Se
H.D. [HILDA DOOLITTLE] (1886–1961)
Hermes of the Ways
O read
Sea Rose
Mid-day
Sheltered Garden
Fragment 113
Helen
Fragment Sixty-eight
Epitaph
from Tribute to the Angels
HAZEL HALL (1886–1924)
Instruction
Light Sleep
Things That Grow
The Listening Macaws
ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887–1962)
Salmon Fishing
Birds
Boats in a Fog
Roan Stallion
Hurt Hawks
The Purse-Seine
The Beaks of Eagles
The Ocean’s Tribute
It nearly cancels my fear of death
MARIANNE MOORE (1887–1972)
A Jelly-Fish
To Military Progress
Critics and Connoisseurs
The Fish
Poetry
A Grave
Marriage
Silence
The Steeple-Jack
The Pangolin
The Paper Nautilus
He ‘‘Digesteth Harde Yron’’
In Distrust of Merits
Nevertheless
The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing
T. S. ELIOT (1888–1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Preludes
Gerontion
The Waste Land
from Four Quartets
Little Gidding
PROSE
Tradition and the Individual Talent
JUN FUJITA (1888–1963)
Michigan Boulevard
Chicago River
JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888–1974)
Necrological
Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
Here Lies a Lady
Captain Carpenter
CONRAD AIKEN (1889–1973)
from Senlin: A Biography
Prelude 1
Time in the Rock 42
CLAUDE MCKAY (1889–1948)
The Harlem Dancer
If We Must Die
The Tropics in New York
America
Baptism
Outcast
Harlem Shadows
MIKHAIL NAIMY (1889–1988)
Hunger
My Brother
from The Chord of Hope
ELIA ABU MADI [MADEY] (1890–1957)
Holiday Present
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH (1892–1982)
Ars Poetica
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892–1950)
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
If I should learn, in some quite casual way
The Little Ghost
Bluebeard
First Fig
I think I should have loved you presently
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
I shall forget you presently, my dear
Only until this cigarette is ended
Recuerdo
Grown-up
Love is not blind. I see with single eye
I, being born a woman and distressed
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
To Inez Milholland
Justice Denied in Massachusetts
To Elinor Wylie
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
If in the years to come you should recall
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you
DOROTHY PARKER (1893–1967)
General Review of the Sex Situation
One Perfect Rose
SALOMO´ N DE LA SELVA (1893–1959)
Tropical Town
Tropical Childhood
Deliverance
E. E. CUMMINGS (1894–1962)
All in green went my love riding
in Just-
O sweet spontaneous
Buffalo Bill’s
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
Poem,or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal
i sing of Olaf glad and big
CHARLES REZNIKOFF (1894–1976)
On Brooklyn Bridge I saw a man drop dead
The shopgirls leave their work
Romance
My work done, I lean on the window-sill
I have not even been in the fields
In the shop, she, her mother, and grandmother
The girls outshout the machines
They have built red factories along Lake Michigan
She sat by the window opening into the airshaft
Still much to read, but too late
It had long been dark, though still an hour before supper-time
Permit me to warn you
Testimony
Kaddish
As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts
Te Deum
Epilogue
Four sailors on the bus, dressed in blue denim shirts
If the ship you are traveling on is wrecked
If you cannot look at the sun
Free Verse
from Holocaust
GENEVIEVE TAGGARD (1894–1948)
Everyday Alchemy
With Child
To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
JEAN TOOMER (1894–1967)
Skyline
Reapers
November Cotton Flower
Cotton Song
Song of the Son
Georgia Dusk
Portrait in Georgia
Seventh Street
Her Lips Are CopperWire
Our Growing Day
DADA
Ing Walter Arensberg
Appalling Heart Else von Freytag-Loringhoven
Is It? Else von Freytag-Loringhoven
SONGS OF DISPLACEMENT, MIGRATION, AND WORK II
CORRIDOS
Registro de 1918/Registration of 1918
Nuevo Corrido de Laredo/New Corrido of Laredo
La Discriminacio´n/Discrimination Juan Gayta´n
Corrido de ‘‘Gregorio Cortez’’/Corrido of ‘‘Gregorio Cortez’’
Corrido de los Desarraigados/Corrido of the Uprooted Ones
Corrido de Tejas/Texas Corrido
Deportados/Deported
ANGEL ISLAND POETRY
Japanese Angel Island Poetry
Angel Island—what a beautiful name Kiyohi Hama
New Year’s Day on Angel Island Kiyohi Hama
New Year’s Day came quietly and left silently Kiyohi Hama
Chinese Angel Island Poetry
Today is the last day of winter
The insects chirp outside the four walls
Leaving behind my writing brush and
If the land of the Flowery Flag is occupied by us in turn
The low building with three beams merely shelters the body
This is a message to those who live here not to worry excessively
This place is called an island of immortals
My grief, like dense clouds, cannot be dispersed
The young children do not yet know worry
For one month I was imprisoned; my slippers never moved forward
It was four days before the Chongyang Festival
My parents are old; my family is poor
I went east to Asia; I went west to Europe
I raise my brush to write a poem to tell my dear wife
The silvery red shirt is half covered with dust
Xishi always lives in golden houses
Having not yet crossed the Yellow River, my heart is not at peace
ASIAN-INDIAN IMMIGRANT POETRY
Some push us around, some curse us
Your hair is like a panther’s shadow
KOREAN IMMIGRANT SONGS
Some loves are soft, others are rough
Ari-rang, Ari-rang, A-ra-ri-yo
FILIPINO POETRY AND SONGS
Song of the Alaskero
You were still waving, beloved
Then why did I have to make
The Filipino woman
PARLOR SONGS AND BALLADS
Bird in a Gilded Cage Arthur J. Lamb
Bill Bailey,Won’t You Please Come Home? Hughie Cannon
In the Good Old Summer Time Ren Shields
Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis Andrew Sterling
Mary’s a Grand Old Name George M. Cohan
Harrigan George M. Cohan
Shine On, Harvest Moon Jack Norworth
Take Me Out to the Ball Game Jack Norworth
By the Light of the Silvery Moon Edward Madden
Let Me Call You Sweetheart Beth SlaterWhitson
Peg O’ My Heart Alfred Bryan
Frankie and Johnny
John Henry
WORLD WAR I–ERA SONGS
Give My Regards to Broadway George M. Cohan
You’re a Grand Old Flag George M. Cohan
Alexander’s Ragtime Band Irving Berlin
Keep the Home Fires Burning Lena Guilbert Ford
Over There George M. Cohan
Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning Irving Berlin
PART TWO: SECOND-GENERATION MODERNISMS
Introduction
BLUES
Yellow Dog Blues W. C. Handy
St. Louis Blues W. C. Handy
Beale Street Blues W. C. Handy
Crazy Blues Perry Bradford
Down-Hearted Blues Lonie Austin and Alberta Hunter
See See Rider Ma Rainey
Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues Ida Cox
Friendless Blues Mercedes Gilbert
Mamie’s Blues Jelly Roll Morton
Young Woman’s Blues Bessie Smith
Backwater Blues Bessie Smith
Prove It on Me Blues Ma Rainey
Goodnight Irene
JAZZ AND MUSICAL THEATER LYRICS
Hello! My Baby Joseph Howard
I’ve a Shooting Box in Scotland Cole Porter
Till the Clouds Roll By Jerome Kern and P. G.Wodehouse
Ja Da Bob Carleton
There’s Magic in the Air Ira Gershwin
I’m Just Wild About Harry Noble Sissle
Charleston Cecil Mack
Star Dust Mitchell Parish
It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) Edward Kennedy ‘‘Duke’’ Ellington and Irving Mills
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? E. Y. ‘‘Yip’’ Harburg
Over the Rainbow E. Y. ‘‘Yip’’ Harburg
GOSPEL MUSIC
The Old Rugged Cross George Bennard
Take My Hand, Precious Lord Thomas A. Dorsey
This Little Light of Mine Harry Dixon Loes and Avis B. Christiansen
Down by the Riverside
EVARISTO RIBERA CHEVREMONT (1896–1974)
La sinfoný´a de los martillos/Symphony of the Hammers
LOUISE BOGAN (1897–1970)
Medusa
Women
The Alchemist
The Crows
Henceforth, From the Mind
The Sleeping Fury
Psychiatrist’s Song
MELVIN B. TOLSON (1898–1966)
from Dark Symphony
from Harlem Gallery
HART CRANE (1899–1932)
In Shadow
My Grandmother’s Love Letters
Chaplinesque
Praise for an Urn
Voyages
To Brooklyn Bridge
Van Winkle
Eternity
The Broken Tower
PROSE
from General Aims and Theories
WEN I-TO [WEN JIAHUA] (1899–1946)
The Laundry Song
ALLEN TATE (1899–1979)
The Wolves
The Mediterranean
Ode to the Confederate Dead
The Swimmers
YVOR WINTERS (1900–1968)
Two Songs of Advent
The Hunter
The Shadow’s Song
Cool Nights
Sleep
God of Roads
The Marriage
By the Road to the Air-Base
A Dream Vision
STERLING BROWN (1901–1989)
When de Saints Go Ma’ching Home
Strong Men
Slim Greer
Slim Lands a Job?
Ma Rainey
LAURA RIDING (1901–1991)
Helen’s Burning
The World and I
The Wind Suffers
GWENDOLYN BENNETT (1902–1981)
Heritage
Street Lamps in Early Spring
ARNA BONTEMPS (1902–1973)
A Black Man Talks of Reaping
Nocturne at Bethesda
KENNETH FEARING (1902–1961)
Dirge
Ad
Beware
Art Review
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–1967)
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Negro
Danse Africaine
Jazzonia
Justice
The Weary Blues
Song to a Negro Wash-Woman
Desire
Poem [2]
To Midnight Nan at Leroy’s
Bound No’th Blues
Song for a Dark Girl
Christ in Alabama
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria
Goodbye Christ
Letter from Spain
PROSE
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
OGDEN NASH (1902–1971)
Reflections on Ice-Breaking
The Turtle
Columbus
COUNTEE CULLEN (1903–1946)
Tableau
Yet Do I Marvel
Incident
Heritage
Sacrament
For a Lady I Know
For One Who Gayly Sowed His Oats
From the Dark Tower
Nothing Endures
LORINE NIEDECKER (1903–1970)
Young girl to marry
Remember my little granite pail?
I said to my head, Write something.
The museum man!
A monster owl
Well, spring overflows the land
My friend tree
Poet’s work
I married
Popcorn-can cover
He lived—childhood summers
What horror to awake at night
My Life byWater
Frog noise
CARL RAKOSI (1903–2004)
ZZZZZ
L’Chayim
Lying in Bed on a Summer Morning
Objectivist Lamp
Old Lovers
RICHARD EBERHART (1904–Present)
The Groundhog
Dam Neck, Virginia
The Fury of Aerial Bombardment
LOUIS (LITTLE COON) OLIVER (1904–1991)
Empty Kettle
The Horned Snake
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY (1904–1978)
‘‘Mantis’’
Anew 10
Anew 20
Anew 21
H. T.
‘‘A’’-11
I’s (pronounced eyes)
CARMEN CELIA BELTRA´ N (1905–2002)
Flores Secas/Dried Flowers
STANLEY KUNITZ (1905–Present)
The Portrait
KENNETH REXROTH (1905–1982)
Lyell’s Hypothesis Again
from The Love Poems of Marichiko
ROBERT PENN WARREN (1905–1989)
Tale of Time
from Audubon: A Vision
AWay to Love God
WORLD WAR II INTERNMENT CAMP POETRY
Distorted Sun Akira Togawa
In Topaz Toyo Suyemoto [Kawakami]
Hokku Toyo Suyemoto [Kawakami]
Untitled Sojin Takei
Untitled Sojin Takei
Prisoner Muin Pzaki
Stepping through snow Oshio
Since the day of internment Sasabune
Dimples Sasabune
Shouldering Taro Katay
Hay spread for Hokko
Sprinkling Hokko
Is this to be? Rokaku
The days when I laughed Hakkaku
Birds Gensui
Thorns of the iron fence Kyokusui
Passed guard tower Kyotaro Komuro
Want to be with children Kyotaro Komuro
Withered grass on ground Shonan Suzuki
Moon shadows on internment camp Shonan Suzuki
Young grass red and shriveled HakuroWada
Released seagull HakuroWada
Even the croaking of frogs HakuroWada
Untitled Keiho Soga
Untitled Keiho Soga
About the Editors
Copyrights and Permissions
Index