Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001

A groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery.

A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness is the first anthology to reveal a tradition that runs through English-language poetry. The 300 poems collected here were composed at an extreme of human endurance—while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death. All bear witness to h...