Red, White, and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America

Red, White, and Blues, a new anthology from the award-winning editors of Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America and Vespers: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality, offers a chorus of contemporary American poets on the idea of liberty, democracy, patriotism, and the American Dream - a twenty-first-century Song of Myself for the entire country. The poems in Red, White, and Blues reflect our collective memory - from icons of pop culture to national disasters and times of unrest. Yet they are not simply reflections of the headline news or political diatribes of the day; instead, they provide roadmaps of American history - roadmaps of where we've been, who we are, and where we're going as a nation. Poets as diverse as Martin Espada and Paisley Rekdal, J. P. Dancing Bear and Vivian Shipley seek to answer questions that resonate within the heart of our national identity - what does it mean to be an American? What is the American Dream? How does one define patriotism? Regardless of ethnicity, gender, or class, each poet's answer to such questions proves that our experiences unite us more than they divide us. Red, White, and Blues is an ambitious collection