Cultural writing. In this important new collection, editor Douglas Messerli has collected 78 lyrics of American folksong and popular music from the 19th century. Some of these songs, particularly the African-American spirituals, the chanteys, and the cowboy songs, are beautiful paeans to the American way of living. But the vast majority, especially the minstrel songs and the Civil War ballads, are often perverse in their racial humor and sexual undertones. These lyrics reveal that some of our favorite American song classics are highly representative of the wild and open wilderness - both energizing and more than a little frightening - of the American landscape. From the patriotically conceived "America" of 1832 to the rebelliously insistent "I'll Marry the Man I Love" of 1897, the lyrics in this volume reveal the vast range of the American people and their ways of living.

Publisher of Green Integer and (formerly) Sun & Moon Press, Messerli has published several books of poetry and fiction, as well as editing the ongoing PIP series of World of Poetry of the 20th Century and numerous other titles.