Provides essays on the careers, works and backgrounds of the 150 poets and over 1000 poems that are included in the Library of America anthology (1-57958-034-3). It also provides entries on specialized categories of 19th-century verse, such as hymns, folk ballads, spirituals, Civil War songs and Native American poetry. The entries, besides presenting essential factual information, amount to in-depth critical essays. A bibliography at the end of each entry directs readers to other key works by and about the poet. The encyclopaedia is keyed to the contents of the Library of America anthology.

This reference treats a broad range of individual poets and poems, along with many articles devoted to discrete topics, schools, or periods of American verse in the 20th century. Entries are divided into: poet entries - providing biographical and cultural contexts for the author's career, with critical evaluation of the most salient poems or volumes of verse in her/his development; entries on individual works - offering closer explication of the most resonant poems in the 20th-century canon; and topical entries - offering analyses of a given period of literary production such as the Harlem...

Eric Haralson examines the far-reaching changes in gender politics and the emergence of modern male homosexuality in writings of Henry James and three authors greatly influenced by him: Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. Emphasizing American masculinity portrayed in fiction between 1875 and 1935, Haralson traces James' engagement with sexual politics from his first novels of the 1870s to his "major phase" at the turn of the century.