Three Centuries of American Poetry offers a comprehensive overview of America's vast poetic heritage from 1620 to 1923. Spanning history from the Colonial Era to the early twentieth century, it features the finest work of some 150 poets, including Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and Gertrude Stein.

In addition to these major poets, this collection also celebrates the significant body of work by lesser-known American writers from all walks of life. The editors have selected poets from each era in our nation's history, including the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the Romantic Era, and the Gilded and Modern Ages, as well as a memorable array of rare ballads, songs, hymns, spirituals, and carols - well-known and less known - that echo through our nation's history.