The American Sonnet

Poet and scholar team Dora Malech and Laura T. Smith collect and foreground an impressive range of sonnets, including formal and formally subversive sonnets by established and emerging poets, highlighting connections across literary moments and movements. Poets include Phillis Wheatley, Fredrick Goddard Tuckerman, Emma Lazarus, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gertrude Stein, Fradel Shtok, Claude McKay, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ruth Muskrat Bronson, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Dunstan Thompson, Rhina P. Espaillat, Lucille Clifton, Marilyn Hacker, Wanda Coleman, Patricia Smith, Jericho Brown, and Diane Seuss. The sonnets are accompanied by critical essays that likewise draw together diverse voices, methodologies, and historical and theoretical perspectives that represent the burgeoning field of American sonnet studies.

Contributor List: Essayists

Abdul Ali, Baltimore, MD

Anna Lena Phillips Bell, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Jodie Childers, Queens, New York

Benjamin Crawford, University of Alabama

Meg Day, Franklin and Marshall College

Donna Denizé, St. Albans School

Michael Dumanis, Bennington College

Jordan Finkin, Hebrew Union College

Rebecca Morgan Frank, Northwestern University

Anna Maria Hong, Mount Holyoke College

Gillian Huang-Tiller, University of Virginia, Wise

Walt Hunter, Clemson University

John James, University of California, Berkeley

Matthew Kilbane, University of Notre Dame

Diana Leca, University of Oxford

Ariel Martino, Colgate University

Nate Mickelson, New York University

Lisa L. Moore, University of Texas at Austin

Timo Müller, University of Konstanz, Germany

Carl Phillips, Washington University in St. Louis

Zoë Pollak, Columbia University

Jonathan F.S. Post, UCLA

Stephen Regan, Durham University, UK

Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia

Hollis Robbins, University of Utah

Nathan Spoon, Joelton, TN

Marlo Starr, Wittenberg University

Yuki Tanaka, Hosei University, Japan

Tess Taylor, Ashland University

Michael Theune, Illinois Wesleyan University

Eleanor Wakefield, University of Oregon

Lesley Wheeler, Washington and Lee University

Jon Woodson, Howard University emeritus

Contributors List: Poets

Elizabeth Alexander, Agha Shahid Ali, Julia Alvarez, Maggie Anderson, Tacey Atsitty, Charles Bernstein, Ted Berrigan, Jen Bervin, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Ruth Muskrat Bronson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jericho Brown, Lucille Clifton, Henri Cole, Wanda Coleman, Countee Cullen, William Cullen Bryant, E.E. Cummings, Meg Day, Natalie Diaz, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rhina Espaillat, Tarfia Faizullah, Robert Frost, torrin a. greathouse, Marilyn Hacker, Robert Hayden, Terrance Hayes, Anthony Hecht, Lynn Hejinian, Leslie Pinckney Hill, Anna Maria Hong, Langston Hughes, David Humphreys, Helen Hunt Jackson, Tyehimba Jess, Helene Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, June Jordan, Douglas Kearney, Richard Kenney, Joan Larkin, Emma Lazarus, Mani Levb, Amy Lowell, Robert Lowell, Nate Marshall, Bernadette Mayer, George Marion McClellan, Brandy Nalani McDougall, Claude McKay, Joyelle McSweeney, Lo Kwa Mei-en, James Merrill, Phillip Metres, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simone Muench, Marilyn Nelson, Craig Santos Perez, Carl Phillips, Sylvia Plath, Alexander Posey, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Adrienne Rich, Lola Ridge, Muriel Rukeyeser, Kay Ryan, Diane Seuss, Fradel Shtok, Aaron Shurin, giovanni singleton, Patricia Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Nathan Spoon, Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Su, Lorenzo Thomas, Dunstan Thompson, Natasha Tretheway, Fredrick Goddard Tuckerman, Mona Van Duyn, Ellen Bryant Voight, Margaret Walker, Lucian B. Watkins, Phillis Wheatley, John Wheelwright, Jackie K. White, Walt Whitman, James Wright, Elinor Wylie