In this book John Hollander offers a buoyant guided tour of American light verse-a tradition he pursues from Ambrose Bierce's sardonic The devil's dictionary quatrains to the latter-day comic inventions of Edward Gorey, Kenneth Koch, and James Merrill. Along the way, American wits gathers a rich harvest of couplets, clerihews, epigrams, parodies, burlesques, and other forms of fractured verse. The varied and often surprising list of contributors includes...

Contains a collection of poetry that spans two centuries and provides a diverse point of view of American life. American Poetry offers a collection of 26 verses by our finest poets, all with their unique perspective on the land they loved and accompanied by remarkable paintings that enhance the meaning of the words. Here, beautifully illustrated, are such unforgettable works.