This Companion brings together essays on some fifty-four American poets, from Anne Bradstreet to contemporary performance poetry.

1. 'The first shall be last': apology and redemption in the work of the first New England poets, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor Charlotte Gordon; 2. Phillis Wheatley Carla Willard; 3. The historical epic, women's poetry, and early American verse Kerry Larson; 4. The first this time: Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier Christoph Irmscher; 5. Ralph Waldo Emerson Mark Scott; 6. Edgar Allan Poe Kevin Hayes; 7. Walt Whitman David S. Reynolds; 8. Melville the poet Robert Faggen; 9. Emily Dickinson Martha Nell Smith; 10. Paul Laurence Dunbar Joanne M. Braxton and Lauri Ramey; 11. Edwin Arlington Robinson Henry Atmore; 12. Robert Frost Mark Richardson; 13. Gertrude Stein Joan Retallack; 14. Wallace Stevens Eleanor Cook; 15. William Carlos Williams Ian Copestake; 16. Ezra Pound Alec Marsh; 17. Marianne Moore Celeste Goodridge; 18. T. S. Eliot and American poetry John Cooper; 19. Hart Crane's visionary company Robert Bernard Haas; 20. The new Negro Renaissance Steven Tracey; 21. Langston Hughes Henry Atmore; 22. Elizabeth Bishop Susan McCabe; 23. Gwendolyn Brooks James Smethurst; 24. The three voices of Robert Lowell Steven Axelrod; 25. The Black Mountain School Alan Golding; 26. Jack Spicer Daniel Katz; 27. Allen Ginsberg: irreverent, reverential, and apocalyptic American poet Jonah Raskin; 28. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and confessional poetry Melanie Waters; 29. 'Street musicians': Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery Andrew Epstein; 30. Adrienne Rich: the poetry of witness Wendy Martin and Annalisa Zox-Weaver; 31. An 'empty prescription': pleasure in contemporary American poetry David Kirby.