America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience

Publication date: September 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-939639-16-5
Perfect-bound paperback; 224 pages

Selected by Sixteen Rivers Press
Foreword by Camille T. Dungy 

This anthology, born in response to the 2016 presidential election, combines the voices of poets from across America—from red states and blue states, high schools and nursing homes, big cities and small towns—with the voices of poets from other countries and other times. From Virgil and Dante to Claudia Rankine and Mai Der Vang, from Milton to Merwin, from Po Chü-i to Robin Coste Lewis, these voices—now raucous, now muted, now lyric, now plain—join together here in dissent and in praise, in grief and alarm, in vision and hope. The 126 poems in this book call out to America in resistance to threats to our democracy and in the resilient belief that this fragile, imperfect form of government can and must be preserved. “These poets have an urgent message to share with you,” writes Camille T. Dungy in the foreword. “This message is brand new, and it is also eternal. Read carefully. What you learn here might just save your life.” 

“Poetry is one of the oldest forms of resistance. Entering not only our minds but our hearts, poems can swim under the highest walls erected by the powerful, subverting the most staggering onslaughts of distortion and outright lies, undermining threats, answering despair, rescuing the simplest and yet most profound ways that we know, reviving our courage, inviting action. Tyrants, despots, fascists of all kinds, beware this book. It may bring even you to your senses!” —Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones  

“ ‘The master’s tools,’ writes Audre Lorde, ‘will never dismantle the master’s house.’ Poems are one of humanity’s most important tools because they operate outside of policy, outside of the system. They are the instruments of the people not of the palace. This timely, urgent, and vital collection reminds us of the civic work poems do. They deliver a different kind of knowing—a deeper wisdom—than conventional news or posts or feeds. The resistance and resilience of these poems comfort and connect us, but they also catalyze our voices and our collective rage. Wallace Stevens once wrote, ‘Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.’ America, We Call Your Name gives me hope in our work as poets and as citizens.”—Dean Rader, author of Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry

Press member Helen Wickes worked on the committee to create this anthology. Her essay introducing the book appeared in the online journal, Dreaming Machine.

POEMS BY

Diya Abdo • Ellery Akers • Jose A. Alcantara • Elizabeth Alexander • Dante Alighieri • Anonymous • Rick Barot • Ellen Bass • David Beckman • Bei Dao • Dan Bellm • Michael Benedikt • Joshua Bennett • Reginald Dwayne Betts • Frank Bidart • William Blake • Chana Bloch • Heather Bourbeau • Jericho Brown • Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman • C. P. Cavafy • Thomas Centolella • Lucille Clifton • Susan Cohen • Laura Da’ • Matt Daly • Patrick Daly • Mahmoud Darwish • Lucille Lang Day • Mai Der Vang • Ann DeVilbiss • Natalie Diaz • Emily Dickinson • Carol Dine • Dante Di Stefano • Susan G. Duncan • Camille T. Dungy • Chiyuma Elliott • Molly Fisk • Jen Stewart Fueston • Molly Giles • Miriam Bird Greenberg • Susan Griffin • Judy Halebsky • Forrest Hamer • Robert Hass • Robert Hayden • Terrance Hayes • Seamus Heaney • Juan Felipe Herrera • Brenda Hillman • Jane Hirshfield • Tony Hoagland • Robinson Jeffers • Janet Jennings • Tyehimba Jess • Jaan Kaplinski • Yusef Komunyakaa • Dana Koster • Susanna Lang • Emma Lazarus • Ursula K. Le Guin • Julia B. Levine • Philip Levine • Larry Levis • Robin Coste Lewis • Ada Limón • Audre Lorde • Alison Luterman • William Matthews • Shane McCrae • Dawn McGuire • Grace McNally • Jane Mead • W. S. Merwin • Czeslaw Milosz • Jack Millson • John Milton • Lisel Mueller • Meryl Natchez • Leonard Nathan • Pablo Neruda • Gail Newman • Naomi Shihab Nye • Sharon Olds • Martin Ott • George Perreault • Irma Pineda • Po Chü-i • Tania Pryputniewicz • Dean Rader • Claudia Rankine • Liam Rector • Adrienne Rich • Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith • Martin Russell • Kay Ryan • Tomaž Šalamun • Eliot Schain • Peter Dale Scott • Prartho Sereno • Mona Nicole Sfeir • William Shakespeare • Solmaz Sharif • Percy Bysshe Shelley • Evie Shockley • Shu Ting • Austin Smith • Danez Smith • Elizabeth Spencer Spragins • Gerald Stern • Anita Sullivan • Wisława Szymborska • Adam Tavel • Susan Terris • Tomas Tranströmer • Tu Fu • Tim Vincent • Virgil • Ocean Vuong • Bonnie Rae Walker • Walt Whitman • William Carlos Williams • Charles Wright • Joseph Zaccardi • Matthew Zapruder