An acclaimed poet curates an inspiring and insightful collection of forty great American poems that reveal the promise of a nationWe live in time of searching. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience from the beginning? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch, poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions, of reconnecting with one another and with what's best in us.Now, in celebration of Library of America's 40th anniversary, Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems, ranging from Anne Bradstreet's The Author to Her Book and Phillis Wheatley's To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works to Garrett Hongo's Ancestral Graves, Kahuku and Joy Harjo's Rabbit Is Up to Tricks to explore how these poems have shaped his own life and how they might uplift our life as the diverse nation we have become.