Flexible enough for any poetry course, this text is designed to make your students lifelong lovers of poetry. It combines classic poetry with today's hippest verse, mixing in delicious portions of contemporary life, humor, and universal themes. In-depth chapters on authors such as Emily Dickinson and Billy Collins reveal the real-life contexts in which poets create. There is also plenty of support for students -- with thorough chapters on the poetic elements, six sensible chapters on critical reading and writing, and many helpful sample close readings, writing assignments, and student papers.
MICHAEL MEYER (Ph.D., University of Connecticut) has taught introductory writing and literature courses for almost 30 years -- since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and earlier at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and The College of William and Mary. Meyer's scholarly articles have appeared in American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, he is a former president of the Thoreau Society and the co-author (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. His first book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau's Political Reputation in America, was awarded the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize by the American Studies Association. In addition to several introductory literature texts for Bedford/St. Martin's, Meyer is also editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings and the author of The Little, Brown Guide to Writing Research Papers.
