Old Glory: American War Poems from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorism

This unique, comprehensive anthology gathers together more than two hundred poems about the American experience of war—narratives, meditations, elegies, lamentations, odes, tributes, and battle hymns—many of them classics. Written by soldier-poets as well as poets on the home front, they are deeply personal, reflecting love of country, sacrifice, tragedy, glory, and sometimes disillusionment or dissent.

Arranged chronologically, virtually every conflict is included: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Indian War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, September 11, and the present war in Iraq. Among the 140 poets are Longfellow, Wheatley, Dunbar, Bryant, Emerson, Thoreau, Crane, Dickinson, Melville, Whitman, Whittier, Masters, Bogan, Lindsay, Cummings, Eliot, Frost, Lowell, Pound, Sandburg, Bishop, Hughes, Levertov, Stevens, Williams, Bly, Creeley, Ginsberg, Harper, Paley, Rich, Warren, Komunyakaa, Weigl, and Collins.

A major historical, cultural, and literary volume, Old Glory speaks from the depth of time as well as from the immediacy of our own moment.