Florida in Poetry: A History of the Imagination

Long before John Smith set foot in Virginia, Spanish and French poets were writing about the landscape and inhabitants of Florida. This is the first comprehensive anthology of Florida poetry, from some of the earliest European encounters with the peninsula to the experiences of contemporary poets. It is a history of the imagination of Florida’s past, present, and future. This is a cross-section of voices enchanted by, complaining about, wondering at, bemused by, and disgusted with Florida’s environment and character-includes poems by Bartolome de Flores, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Edmund Skellings, May Swenson, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Enid Shomer, and Ricardo Pau-LIosa, among many others.

In this book you will read Walt Whitman’s eulogy of Seminole Chief Osceola, share a few samples of Zora Neale Hurston’s and Langston Hughes’s pioneering collections of the folk poetry of Florida, see St. Augustine through Ralph Waldo Emerson’s convalescent eyes, and share poet A. R. Ammons’s vision of a Florida landfill. This is a delightful blend of old and modern poetry that will be appreciated by poets and students alike.