"Every lovesick summer has its song,
And this one I pretended to despise.
But if I were alone when it came on,
I turned it up full-blast to sing along
A primal scream in croaky baritone,
The notes all flat, the lyrics mostly slurred
No wonder I spent so much time along
Making the rounds in Dad s old Thunderbird."
From "Cruising with the Beach Boys" by Dana Gioia

No one should be surprised that rock and roll music turns up in the work of many of the Baby-Boom poets, where it conjures up poignant memories, evokes a specific mood, or haunts the poets...

"What a great premise for an anthology And it succeeds, both in its celebration of our crazy culture and its fascinating analysis, through the poems, of popular myths that have stood the test of time." -Kliatt

In the past few decades, poetry about and around popular culture has become a very hip contemporary art form. Real Things is a collection of over 150 poems by more than 130 poets who themselves represent the cultural diversity of the United States. With subjects ranging from the influence of Mickey Mouse on child-raising to the relationship of Barbie to sex in America, from...

Masquerade is the most comprehensive anthology yet published of poetry by American gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons. It includes representative poems from more than 100 writers from pre-colonial times to the end of the Second World War. The anthology begins with selections of anonymous texts from the oral traditions of Hawaii and Native America, followed by voodoo chants and cowboy songs (with a few limericks thrown in for good measure). The selections are arranged by the year of the poet s birth and include samplings of poetry by a racially and ethnically diverse group...