Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain

This collection redefines the great canon of American poetry from its origins in the 17th century right up to the present. It features the work of more than 200 poets, almost three times as many as the 1976 edition. The book includes not only writers born since the previous edition, but also many fine poets overlooked in earlier editions or little known in the past but highly deserving of attention. Many more women and African-American poets are represented,...