American Religious Poems: An Anthology by Harold Bloom - Bloom, Harold, and Jesse Zuba, eds. The Library of America, 2006. Distributed by Penguin Putnam. 685p. $40.00, hardcover. ISBN-10: 1-931082-74-X. ISBN-13: 978-1-931082-74-7. 811.008’0382 Religious poetry, American.

Literary critic Harold Bloom controversially holds that there is a peculiarly American approach to religion in which the powerful and divine self is celebrated as sacred.

Bloom, along with professor of English Jesse Zuba, has compiled this collection of poems that reflect the experience of religion—or spirituality—by American poets. The selection includes the work of over two hundred poets and is arranged chronologically, from Anne Bradstreet and Cotton Mather of colonial days to Louise Erdrich and Alan Shapiro of the present.

Familiar poets (and frequent doubters) Harry Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Jones Very, and Emily Dickinson are well represented, but over half the book is devoted to those who lived and wrote in the twentieth century. Welcome additions to the collection are the words to American spirituals and anonymous hymns (such as “Balm in Gilead” and “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”) and some Native American songs and chants.

End material includes a reader’s guide to “facilitate reading, directing readers toward specific poems touching on certain areas of religious experience,” sources and notes, and indexes by poet, title, and first line.

This volume will serve well as a resource for congregational libraries of all faiths. One pleasing feature, for a book of its scope and usefulness as a ready reference, is its comfortable, reader-friendly weight and (5.25" x 8.2") size.

Monica Tenney