M. Alexander
Anne Bradstreet &
Anne Bradstreet
Anne Bradstreet
Edward Taylor
Edward Taylor
Edward Taylor
Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Jonathan Edwards (Theologian)
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Frost
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
Wallace Stevens
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound & Li Po
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)
e. e. cummings
e. e. cummings
e. e. cummings
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Zora Neale Hurston
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen
Maxine Hong Kingston
Alice Walker
Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
“America” by Claude McKay is a traditional English rhyming sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet written in iambic pentameter. It was first published in the literary journal Liberator in 1921. The central theme of the poem is the Jamaican-American poet’s simultaneous awe, hatred, and b...
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.