The ethnically diverse scope, broad chronological coverage, and mix of biographical, critical, historical, political, and cultural entries make this the most useful and exciting poetry reference of its kind for students today"-- "American Poets and Poetry: From the Colonial Era to the Present is a compendium of full-length informative essays on the most important poets, genres, movements, and trends in American poetry from its virtual beginnings to the twenty-first century--from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Anne Bradstreet and Michael Wigglesworth, through Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost, to poets of the present day such as Billy Collins and Natasha Trethewey. Written by some of the leading critics of our time, these thorough essays are designed with the high school student or college undergraduate in mind. In addition to the entries on poets, this work offers many entries on particular topics, whether those are periods, movements, practices, subgenres, or key terms in poetry. These topics include the Harlem Renaissance, Native American Poetry, Beat Poetry, Confessional Poetry, Modernism, the San Francisco Renaissance, and many more. Short bibliographies appear after each entry, and a long selective bibliography of sources on American poetry appears at the end of volume 2.