For the first time an anthology offers a broad selection of works from North America's oldest poetic tradition. Beginning with the earliest European encounters, poets have spent the past four hundred years exploring every facet of life in Florida, from tubing the Ichetucknee to visiting gator farms, from searching for the fountain of youth to stalking the Florida panther, from building the railroads to driving the Tamiami Trail, and from excavating fossils to launching space shuttles. Florida in Poetry traces the breadth and depth of that history of the imagination in all its richness and diversity.

    As French, Spanish, and British colonial writers gave way to such classic American voices as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and John Greenleaf Whittier, poets continued their fascination with Florida's natives and tourists, its wars and weather, its coasts and vegetation. Mixed among these earlier works are such modern reinterpretations of history as Allen Ginsberg's meditation on Florida's Indians, X.J. Kennedy's portrait of Ponce de León, and Tennessee Williams' recreations of a sponge diver's fantasies.

    During the twentieth century a remarkable collection of poets has discovered the southernmost state. Among them are the Spanish Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez and such Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winners as Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Stephen Vincent Benet, George Dillon, Richard Eberhart, James Merrill, Donald Justice, and Richard Wilbur. A distinguished group of major American writers, including Langston Hughes, May Swenson, Hart Crane, Lois Lenski, John Ciardi, and A. R. Ammons, has also examined the state of mind that is Florida. These poets have joined such Florida icons as Zora Neale Hurston, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Stetson Kennedy, Vivian Laramore Rader, and Will McLean in attempting to refine their experiences into art.

    Building on this tradition, in recent years Florida has nurtured a notable collection of talented writers. Each of these poets has developed a distinctive perspective on life in this richly complex state. While Van Brock explores the panhandle's beaches, David Bottoms sifts a Palm Beach landfill. As Lola Haskins documents the lives of pioneer women, Carolina Hospital searches for Wallace Stevens. With the same care that Dionisio Martinez surveys the Gulf Coast, Peter Meinke maps the Magic Kingdom. Where Ricardo Pau-Llosa recreates Cuban culture, Yvonne Sapia combines a wide variety of cultures. And as Florida's current poet laureate Edmund Skellings imagines becoming lost in space, Enid Shomer fantasizes about becoming lost in kudzu.

    The editors offer as an epilogue a Florida Bestiary, a celebration of the state's abundant wildlife--its sea gulls and vultures, its flamingos and buzzards, its turtles and cockroaches, its bluefish and copperheads, its manatees and alligators, its panthers and armadillos, and even a polar bear in Miami. In addition, they have included notes, a glossary of terms, and an index.