Songs of ourselves: the uses of poetry in America

Seer and sage

Amateur and professional

Absence and presence

Sophisticate and innocent

Celebrity and cipher

Alien and intimate

Listen, my children: modes of poetry reading in American schools

I am an American: poetry and civic ideals

Grow old along with me: poetry and emotions among family and friends

God's in his heaven: religious uses of verse

Lovely as a tree: reading and seeing out-of-doors

Coda "favorite" poems and contemporary readers.