Masquerade is the most comprehensive anthology yet published of poetry by American gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons. It includes representative poems from more than 100 writers from pre-colonial times to the end of the Second World War. The anthology begins with selections of anonymous texts from the oral traditions of Hawaii and Native America, followed by voodoo chants and cowboy songs (with a few limericks thrown in for good measure). The selections are arranged by the year of the poet's birth and include samplings of poetry by a racially and ethnically diverse group of men and women. Contemporary readers will know the work of some of these poets, such as Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman. Other poets, such as George Santayana and Adah Isaacs Menken, will be strangers to most. In all, these poets created a rich heritage of verse that has been for the most part masked throughout the history of American literature.
Jim Elledge is a poet and Professor of English and Humanities at the Pratt Institute. His most recent books are The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, a novel in prose poems, and Real Things: An Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry (IUP, 1999). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Preface
Introduction
Anonymous Songs and Chants
Hawaii
Native America
Cowboy
Voodoo
Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883)
Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
George Henry Boker (1823-1890)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)
Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903)
Bayard Taylor (1825-1878)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Horatio Alger, Jr. (1832-1899)
Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908)
Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868)
Charles Warren Stoddard (1843-1909)
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
We'wah (1849-1896)
Edgar Saltus (1855-1921)
Henry Fuller (1857-1929)
Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929)
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
Hasteen Klah (1867-1937)
Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1869-1949)
Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
David O'Neil (1874-1947)
Rose O'Neill (1874-1944)
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)
Helen Hay Whitney (1876-1944)
Esther M. Clark (1876-?)
Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972)
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)
Douglas Malloch (1877-1938)
Persis M. Owen (?-?)
Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949)
John Erskine (1879-1951)
Angeline Weld Grimké (1880-1958)
Witter Bynner (1881-1968)
Walter de Casseres (1881-1900)
Mina Loy (1882-1966)
Edward Slocum (1882-1946)
Badger Clark (1883-1957)
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962)
William Alexander Percy (1885-1952)
H.D. (1886-1961)
Leonard Bacon (1887-1954)
Samuel Loveman (1887-1976)
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Scudder Middleton (1888-1959)
Antoinette Scudder (1888-1958)
Willard Austin Wattles (1888-1950)
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)
James Fenimore Cooper, Jr. (1892-1918)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Mercedes de Acosta (1893-1968)
Genevieve Taggard (1894-1948)
Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)
Robert McAlmon (1895-1956)
Bernice Kenyon (1897-?)
John Wheelwright (1897-1940)
Elsa Gidlow (1898-?)
Royal Murdoch (1898-1981)
Hart Crane (1899-1933)
Lynn Riggs (1899-1954)
Robert Francis (1901-1987)
Glenway Wescott (1901-1987)
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Edwin Denby (1903-1983)
Frank Belknap Long (1903-?)
Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986)
Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987)
W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
Hubert Creekmore (1907-1966)
Lincoln Kirsten (1907-1996)
Parker Tyler (1907-1974)
Frederic Prokosch (1908-1989)
Gale Wilhelm (1908-1991)
Charles Henri Ford (1909-2002)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Paul Goodman (1911-1972)
Willard Maas (1911-1971)
James Broughton (1913-1999)
Robert Friend (1913-?)
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)
Alicia Kay Smith (1913-?)
Owen Dodson (1914-1983)
Dunstan Thompson (1918-1975)
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Author Index
Title Index