Poetry of the American West

A Columbia Anthology

Edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming
Columbia University Press, 1996
ISBN 978-0231103862

The imagery of the American West is chronicled over the course of its long and varied cultural heritage. Alison Hawthorne Deming has selected 150 poems by 75 poets including protest poems of the Chicano farmworkers, campfire cowboy songs, sacred American Indian songs, and works by Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, Walt Whitman, and other canonical figures.

Praise for Poetry of the American West

Substantial, provocative, necessary, lasting.

— The Bloomsbury Review

This landmark anthology samples work from the panoply of poetic voices that spring from, or find a home in, the American West. . . Startling and poignant. . . Insightful biographical notes do much to place the work in a larger literary and social context; historical and contemporary photographs of the people and landscapes of the West make it an exceptionally handsome book.

— Boston Review

[A] testament to the West’s powerful magnetism and survival.

— The San Francisco Review

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