Alternative Makings in American Poetry

Abstract

There are many ways to look at the making of American poetry. The author begins with the land and Native Americans in the New World, including what is in the United States, decentring or defamiliarizing the Anglo-American tradition by beginning with the Indigenous peoples and their languages and discussing poets of aboriginal, African, and Asian backgrounds in poetry and translation. With settlers, the author begins with Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, a Creole writing an epic in Spanish, and ends with Forrest Gander, also born in the United States, including a poem that mixes English and Spanish. In between, a mixed group of poets is discussed to show the richness and diversity of American poetry and culture: Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Joan Kane, Marilyn Chin, Russell Leong, and the translation of Shuri Kido by Gander and Tomoyuki Endo. These are some alternative makings of American poetry in one strand among many, then, now, and going forward.