This classic anthology of American poetry opens in the colonial seventeenth century and closes in the twentieth, emphasizing the extraordinary, vital period that followed the 1950s. Geoffrey Moore's skilled and unobtrusive editorship is careful not to neglect the major figures of the between-wars period, nor the ballads and parodies that can be said to represent the spirit of America. From Anne Bradstreet to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from William Carlos Williams to Walt Whitman and Ai, the work in "The Penguin Book of American Verse" displays a poetical spectrum of moods, rhythms, objectives and philosophy as diverse and fascinating as the nation from which it springs.