Introduction Kerry Larson; Part I. Mandates, Movements, and Manifestos: 1. The reception of nineteenth-century American poetry Mary Louise Kete; 2. American Indian poetry in the nineteenth century Robert Dale Parker; 3. The poet as poetess Virginia Jackson; 4. Transcendental poetics Stephen Cushman; 5. Slavery and its metrics Max Cavitch; 6. Weathering the news in US Civil War poetry Eliza Richards; 7. The 'twilight of the poets' in the era of American realism, 1875-1900 Elizabeth Renker; Part II. Individual Authors: 8. Longfellow's ambivalence Stephen Burt; 9. Sarah Piatt's grammar of convention and the conditions of authorship Jessica Roberts; 10. Poe and Southern poetry Jack Kerkering; 11. The color line: James Monroe Whitfield and Albery Allson Whitman Ivy Wilson; 12. Colonial violence and poetic transcendence in Whitman's 'Song of Myself' Donald Pease; 13. Emily Dickinson's 'turban'd seas' Cristanne Miller; Selected guide to further reading.