Cover: Literature: A Portable Anthology, 6th Edition by Janet Gardner; Joanne Diaz; Beverly Lawn; Jack Ridl; Peter Schakel

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Literature: A Portable Anthology

Sixth  Edition©2025  Janet Gardner; Joanne Diaz; Beverly Lawn; Jack Ridl; Peter Schakel

ISBN:9781319474065

About

In this collection you will discover a choice gathering of classic and contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama. Great writers you may know about, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and William Shakespeare, are joined by current authors worth knowing, among them Carmen Maria Machado, Jamil Jan Kochai, Solmaz Sharif, Natalie Diaz, Lynn Nottage, and James Ijames.

Table of Contents

[* Indicates material new to this edition]


Preface for Instructors

Selections by Form and Theme

PART ONE: READING AND WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE 
1. Introduction to Reading and Writing about Literature 
Why Read Literature? 
Why Write about Literature? 
What to Expect in a Literature Class 
Literature and Enjoyment 
*Literature and Difficulty 

2. The Role of Good Reading 
The Value of Rereading 
Close Reading 
The Myth of “Hidden Meaning” 
Questions for Close Reading: Fiction Annotating 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, “The Second Coming” (Annotated Poem) 
Questions for Close Reading: Poetry 
Note-Taking 
Questions for Close Reading: Drama 
Informal Writing 
Using Reference Materials 
Asking Critical Questions of Literature 
BEN JONSON, “On My First Son” (Annotated Poem) 
☑ Checklist for Good Reading 

3. The Writing Process 
Prewriting 
Choosing a Topic 
Developing an Argument 
The Thesis 
Gathering Support for Your Thesis 
Organizing Your Paper 
Drafting the Paper 
Revising and Editing 
☑ Global Revision Checklist 
☑ Local Revision Checklist 
☑ Final Editing Checklist 
Peer Editing and Workshops 
Tips for Writing about Literature 
Using Quotations Effectively 
Quoting from Stories 
Quoting from Poems 
Quoting from Plays 
Formatting Your Paper 

4. Common Writing Assignments 
Summary Response 
STUDENT ESSAY: Taylor Plantan, “A Response to ‘Sweat’ ” 
Explication 
ROBERT HERRICK, “Upon Julia’s Clothes” 
STUDENT ESSAY: Jessica Barnes, “Poetry in Motion: Herrick’s ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’ ” 
Analysis 
ROBERT BROWNING, “My Last Duchess” 
STUDENT ESSAY: Adam Walker, “Possessed by the Need for Possession: Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ ” 
Comparison and Contrast 
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, “After Death” 
STUDENT ESSAY: Todd Bowen, “Speakers for the Dead: Narrators in ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘After Death’ ” 
Essay Exams 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, “Sonnet 73” 
ROBERT HERRICK, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” 
STUDENT ESSAY EXAM: Midterm Essay 

5. Writing about Stories 
Elements of Fiction 
Plot 
Character 
Point of View 
Setting 
Theme 
Symbolism 
Style 
Stories for Analysis 
KATE CHOPIN, “The Story of an Hour” (Annotated Story) 
STUDENT ESSAY: An Essay That Compares and Contrasts: Melanie Smith, “Good Husbands in Bad Marriages” 

6. Writing about Poems 
Elements of Poetry 
The Speaker 
The Listener 
Imagery 
Sound and Sense 
Two Poems for Analysis 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, “Sonnet 116” (Annotated Poem) 
T. S. ELIOT, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Annotated Poem) 
STUDENT ESSAY: An Explication: Patrick McCorkle, “Shakespeare Defines Love” 

7. Writing about Plays 
Elements of Drama 
Plot, Character, and Theme 
Diction 
Spectacle 
Setting 
How to Read a Play 
Watching a Play 
The Director’s Vision 
STUDENT ESSAY: An Analysis: Sarah Johnson, “Moral Ambiguity and Character Development in Trifles” 

8. Writing a Literary Research Paper 
Finding Sources 
Evaluating Sources 
Working with Sources 
Quotations 
Paraphrases and Summaries 
Commentaries 
Keeping Track of Your Sources 
Writing the Paper 
Refine Your Thesis 
Organize Your Evidence 
Start Your Draft 
Revise 
Edit and Proofread 
Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism 
*Understanding Artificial Intelligence 
What to Document and What Not to Document 
Documenting Sources: MLA Format 
In-Text Citations 
Preparing Your Works Cited List 
STUDENT ESSAY: Sample Research Paper: Rachel McCarthy, “The Widening Gyres of Chaos in Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ ” 

9. Literary Criticism and Literary Theory 
Formalism and New Criticism 
Feminist and Gender Criticism 
Queer Theory 
Marxist Criticism 
Cultural Studies 
Postcolonial Criticism 
Historical Criticism and New Historicism 
Psychological Theories 
Reader-Response Theories 
Structuralism 
Poststructuralism and Deconstruction 
Ecocriticism

PART TWO: Fiction     
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown 
Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado 
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper 
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour 
Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog 
James Joyce, The Dead 
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis 
Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens 
Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat 
Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants 
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily 
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery 
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal 
Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find 
James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 
*Paule Marshall, Reena 
*Julio Cortázar, Continuity of Parks 
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? 
*Ursula LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 
Alice Walker, Everyday Use 
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl 
Raymond Carver, Cathedral 
Sandra Cisneros, My Name 
Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible 
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried 
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings 
*Leila Aboulela, The Museum 
ZZ Packer, Brownies 
Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers 
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck 
*Simon Rich, I Love Girl 
Ted Chiang, The Great Silence 
*Carmen Maria Machado, The Husband Stitch 
*Anthony Veasna So, Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts 
*Jonathan Escoffery, Splashdown 
*Etgar Keret, For the Woman Who Has Everything 
*Jamil Jan Kochai, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak 
*Morgan Talty, The Name Means Thunder 
*Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Home Became a Thing with Thorns 

 PART THREE: Poetry     
Anonymous, The Wife’s Lament 
*Rumi, Let’s love each other 
*Hwang Jini, Expectation 
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Whoso list to hunt 
Queen Elizabeth I, On Monsieur’s Departure 
Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 
Walter Raleigh, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd 
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) 
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”) 
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”) 
Aemilia Lanyer, Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women 
Ben Jonson, On My First Son 
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 
John Donne, Death, be not proud 
George Herbert, The Collar 
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress 
John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent 
Anne Bradstreet, Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House 
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 
Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America 
William Blake, The Lamb 
William Blake, The Tyger 
William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey 
Kobayashi Issa, (“All the time I pray to Buddha”) 
Kobayashi Issa, (“Don’t worry, spiders,”) 
Kobayashi Issa, (“Goes out, comes back — ”) 
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Prometheus 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan 
John Keats, When I have fears that I may cease to be 
John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses 
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess 
Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways 
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach 
Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky 
Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz — when I died 
*Emily Dickinson, could I but ride indefinite
Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death 
*Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Learning to Read 
*Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty 
*José Marti, Two Homelands 
 Walt Whitman, From Song of Myself 
William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree 
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming 
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory 
Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask 
*Angelina Weld Grimké, El Beso 
Robert Frost, After Apple-Picking 
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken 
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro 
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter 
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 
Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo 
Marianne Moore, Poetry 
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est 
Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers 
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues 
Langston Hughes, Theme for English B 
Langston Hughes, Harlem 
Claude McKay, America 
E. E. Cummings, in Just- 
E. E. Cummings, “next to of course god america i 
Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed 
William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow 
William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say 
Pablo Neruda, Body of a Woman 
Countee Cullen, Incident 
W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues (Stop all the clocks) 
*Julia de Burgos, To Julia de Burgos 
Federico García Lorca, Dawn 
Gwendolyn Brooks, the mother 
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool 
Czesław Miłosz, Dedication 
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish 
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art 
Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz 
Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night 
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California 
*Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays 
Audre Lorde, Coal 
Sylvia Plath, Daddy 
William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark 
Mahmoud Darwish, Identity Card 
Seamus Heaney, Digging 
Seamus Heaney, Mid-Term Break 
Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage 
Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham 
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck 
*Adrienne Rich, Power 
Muriel Rukeyser, Waiting for Icarus 
Gary Soto, Moving Away 
Lucille Clifton, homage to my hips 
Lucille Clifton, at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989 
Galway Kinnell, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps 
Joy Harjo, Fear Poem, or I Give You Back 
Louise Erdrich, Indian Boarding School: The Runaways 
Louise Glück, Mock Orange 
*Edward Hirsch, Fast Break 
*Etheridge Knight, Feeling Fucked Up 
Li-Young Lee, Eating Alone 
Sharon Olds, I Go Back to May 1937 
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It 
Linda Pastan, love poem 
*Toi Derricotte, The Minks 
Rita Dove, Fifth Grade Autobiography 
*Charles Simic, My mother was a braid of black smoke 
Robert Pinsky, Shirt 
Billy Collins, Forgetfulness 
Victor Hernández Cruz, Problems with Hurricanes 
Philip Levine, What Work Is 
Tony Hoagland, History of Desire 
Bernadette Mayer, Sonnet (You jerk you didn’t call me up) 
Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica 
Richard Garcia, Why I Left the Church 
*Carter Revard, In Oklahoma 
*Eavan Boland, That the Science of Cartography Is Limited 
Marilyn Chin, How I Got That Name 
Mark Doty, A Display of Mackerel 
Allison Joseph, On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person 
Jane Kenyon, Happiness 
*Jack Agüeros, Sonnet: The History of Puerto Rico 
Mary Ruefle, Rain Effect 
*Martín Espada, My Name is Espada 
Natasha Trethewey, History Lesson 
Jorie Graham, Prayer 
Taylor Mali, What Teachers Make 
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Unidentified Female Student, Former Slave 
Suji Kwock Kim, Occupation 
Kim Addonizio, First Kiss 
*Nick Carbó, Robo 
*Mary Oliver, Wild Geese 
Marilyn Nelson, Emmett Till’s name still catches in my throat, 
Brian Turner, What Every Soldier Should Know 
Terrance Hayes, Talk 
*Terrance Hayes, American Sonnet to My Past and Future Assassin 
*Wisława Szymborska, Photograph from September 11 
C. K. Williams, On the Métro 
Aracelis Girmay, Ode to the Watermelon 
Naomi Shihab Nye, Gate A-4 
*Lemn Sissay, Some Things I Like 
W. S. Merwin, One of the Butterflies 
Amit Majmudar, Arms and the Man 
*Kay Ryan, Crib 
*Solmaz Sharif, Reaching Guantánamo 
 *Evie Shockley, Tonight I Saw 
Eduardo Corral, In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes 
*Raphael Campo, Primary Care 
Katy Didden, “Embrace Them All” 
Ilya Kaminsky, We Lived Happily during the War 
Tarfia Faizullah, En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith 
*Gregory Pardlo, Wishing Well 
Claudia Rankine, (“You are in the dark, in the car . . .”) 
Danez Smith, alternate names for black boys 
Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City 
Fatimah Asghar, Pluto Shits on the Universe 
*Rick Barot, Cascades 501 
Ross Gay, A Small Needful Fact 
Ada Limón, How to Triumph Like a Girl 
*Alberto Ríos, The Border: A Double Sonnet 
Jericho Brown, Bullet Points 
Mahogany L. Browne, Black Girl Magic 
Carolyn Forché, The Boatman 
Matthew Olzmann, Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czesław Miłosz 
*No’u Revilla, Smoke Screen 
Kaveh Akbar, Portrait of the Alcoholic with Relapse Fantasy 
Oliver de La Paz, Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay 
Jenny Johnson, Tail 
Layli Long Soldier, 38 
Maggie Smith, Good Bones 
Javier Zamora, El Salvador 
*Raymond Antrobus, Miami Airport 
Noah Baldino, Passing 
*Chen Chen, I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party 
Kathy Fish, Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild 
*David Tomas Martinez, Found Fragment on Ambition 
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Self-Portrait as Scallop 
Jacob Saenz, Blue Line Incident 
Tracy Smith, Declaration [erasure of the Declaration of Independence] 
*Reginald Dwayne Betts, Ghazal 
*Fatma Krouma, Other Banks 
*Sawako Nakayasu, Girl Soup 
*José Olivarez, Ars Poetica 
*Carl Phillips, Something to Believe In 
*Kayleb Rae Candrilli, My Future Husband-Wife and I Make a Blood Pact to Become the Fathers We Always Needed 
*Victoria Chang, My Mother’s Lungs 
*Natalie Diaz, Manhattan is a Lenape Word 
*Alex Dimitrov, Love 
*Grace Schulman, Because 
*John Keene, Words 
*Jason Koo, The Rest is Silence 
*Diane Seuss, The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do 
*Adrienne Su, My Life in Peaches 
*Richie Hofmann, Things That Are Rare 
*John Lee Clark, Slateku 
*Paisley Rekdal, Have Knowledge 

PART FOUR: Drama     
*Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Translated by David Kovacs) 
*William Shakespeare, As You Like It 
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House (Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp) 
Susan Glaspell, Trifles 
*Alice Childress, Trouble in Mind 
*Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit 
August Wilson, Fences 
Lynn Nottage, Sweat 
*James Ijames, Fat Ham 

Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms 
Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines

Janet Gardner

Janet E. Gardner was Associate Professor of English at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, where she taught courses in drama, British and world literature, and writing for many years. She has published numerous articles, reviews, and chapters on contemporary drama, especially modern British drama and the work of Caryl Churchill.

Joanne Diaz

Joanne Diaz is the recipient of fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is the author of My Favorite Tyrants and The Lessons, the co-editor of The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, and the co-host of the Poetry for All podcast. She is the Isaac Funk Endowed Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Beverly Lawn

Beverly Lawn is Professor of English Emerita and taught undergraduate and graduate fiction and poetry courses for over three decades. She is editor or coeditor of several literature anthologies, including 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology and is also the author of Throat of Feathers, a book of poems.

Jack Ridl

Jack Ridl is Professor Emeritus of English at Hope College where he taught courses in literature, essay writing, poetry writing, and the nature of poetry for thirty-seven years. In 1996 The Carnegie (CASE) Foundation named him Michigan Professor of the Year. Jack’s poetry has been nominated for 18 Pushcart Prizes and includes his recent collection, Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (2019, Wayne State UP).

Peter Schakel

Peter Schakel was the Peter C. and Emajean Cook Professor of English at Hope College, where he taught for forty-eight years. He published numerous scholarly and pedagogical studies on Jonathan Swift and C. S. Lewis. Schakel passed away in 2024.