Includes index.

Part one: Reading and writing about literature. Introduction to reading and writing about literature -- The role of good reading -- The writing process -- Common writing assignments -- Writing about stories -- Writing about poems -- Writing about plays -- Writing a literary research paper -- Literary criticism and literary theory --

Part two: 40 stories. Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The cask of Amontillado / Edgar Allan Poe -- An occurence at Owl Creek Bridge / Ambrose Bierce -- The story of an hour / Kate Chopin -- The lady with the dog / Anton Chekhov -- The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- In the land of the free / Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) -- Hands / Sherwood Anderson -- The dead / James Joyce -- Kew Gardens / Virginia Woolf -- The metamorphosis / Franz Kafka -- Bliss / Katherine Mansfield -- Sweat / Zora Neale Hurston -- A rose of Emily / William Faulkner -- Hills like white elephants / Ernest Hemingway -- Reunion / John Cheever -- Battle royal / Ralph Ellison -- The lottery / Shirley Jackson -- Sonny's blues / James Baldwin -- A good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor -- A very old man with enormous wings / Gabriel García Márquez -- Cathedral / Raymond Carver -- Where are you going, where have you been? / Joyce Carol Oates -- Happy endings / Margaret Atwood -- The lesson / Toni Cade Bambara -- Everyday use / Alice Walker -- The things they carried / Tim O'Brien -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- The red convertible / Louise Erdrich -- My name / Sandra Cisneros -- Sticks / George Saunders -- This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona / Sherman Alexie -- Mine / Alexander Chee -- The great silence / Ted Chiang -- Fiesta, 1980 / Junot Díaz -- Tome / Maile Meloy -- A thousand years of good prayers / Yiyun Li -- Brownies / ZZ Packer -- Echo Ave. / Adrian Tomine -- The thing around your neck / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie --

Part three: 200 poems. Sir Thomas Wyatt -- Queen Elizabeth I -- Christopher Marlowe -- Walter Raleigh -- William Shakespeare -- Amelia Lanyer -- John Donne -- Ben Jonson -- Robert Herrick -- George Herbert -- Hester Pulter -- John Milton -- Anne Bradstreet -- Andrew Marvell -- Thomas Gray -- Phillis Wheatley -- William Blake -- Kobayashi Issa -- William Wordsworth -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- George Gordon, Lord Byron -- Percy Bysshe Shelley -- John Keats -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- Edgar Allan Poe -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson -- Robert Browning -- Walt Whitman -- Matthew Arnold -- Emily Dickinson -- Lewis Carroll -- Gerard Manley Hopkins -- A. E. Housman -- William Butler Yeats -- Edwin Arlington Robinson -- Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Robert Frost -- Rainer Maria Rilke -- Wallace Stevens -- Guillaume Apollinaire -- Mina Loy -- William Carlos Williams -- Ezra Pound -- H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) -- Marianne Moore -- T. S. Eliot -- Claude McKay -- Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Wilfred Owen -- E. E. Cummings -- Federico García Lorca -- Langston Hughes -- Countee Cullen -- Pablo Neruda -- W. H. Auden -- Theodore Roethke -- Elizabeth Bishop -- Czesław Miłosz -- Robert Hayden -- Muriel Rukeyser -- Dudley Randall -- William Stafford -- Randall Jarrell -- Dylan Thomas -- Gwendolyn Brooks -- Robert Lowell -- Denise Levertov -- Jack Gilbert -- Maxine Kumin -- Frank O'Hara -- Allen Ginsberg -- Galway Kinnell -- John Ashbery -- W. S. Merwin -- James Wright -- Philip Levine -- Anne Sexton -- Adrienne Rich -- Etheridge Knight -- Linda Pastan -- Sylvia Plath -- Audre Lorde -- Mary Oliver -- Lucille Clifton -- C. K. Williams -- Charles Simic -- Seamus Heaney -- Robert Pinsky -- Mahmoud Darwish -- Billy Collins -- Toi Derricotte -- Richard Garcia -- Sharon Olds -- Louise Glück -- Quincy Troupe -- Bernadette Mayer -- Marilyn Nelson -- Yusef Komunyakaa -- Jane Kenyon -- Linda Hogan -- Victor Hernández Cruz -- Carolyn Forché -- Jorie Graham -- Linda Gregerson -- Marie Howe -- Dana Gioia -- Joy Harjo -- Jimmy Santiago Baca -- Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Naomi Shihab Nye -- Gary Soto -- Mary Ruefle -- Rita Dove -- Alberto Ríos -- Cherríe Moraga -- Harryette Mullen -- Mark Doty -- Tony Hoagland -- Louise Erdrich -- Kim Addonizio -- Patricia Smith -- Marilyn Chin -- Cathy Song -- Martín Espada -- Li-Young Lee -- Kathy Fish -- Claudia Rankine -- Spencer Reece -- A. Van Jordan -- Taylor Mali -- Margaret Noodin -- Natasha Trethewey -- Sherman Alexie -- Honorée Fanonne Jeffers -- Allison Joseph -- Adrienne Su -- Brian Turner -- Suji Kwock Kim -- Terrance Hayes -- Monica Youn -- Jen Bervin -- Oliver de la Paz -- Tracy Smith -- Eduardo Corral -- Ross Gay -- Aimee Nezhukumatathil -- Katy Didden -- Jericho Brown -- Mahogany L. Browne -- Ada Limón -- Matthew Olzmann -- Aracelis Girmay -- Ilya Kaminsky -- Maggie Smith -- Natalie Diaz -- Jenny Johnson -- Amit Majmudar -- Tarfia Faizullah -- Patricia Lockwood -- Jacob Saenz -- Ocean Vuong -- Kaveh Akbar -- Fatimah Asghar -- Danez Smith -- Javier Zamora -- Noah Baldino -- Layli Long Soldier --

Part four: 9 plays. Oedipus the King / Sophocles ; translated by David Grene -- Othello, the Moor of Venice / William Shakespeare -- A doll house / Henrik Ibsen ; translated by R. Farquharson Sharp -- Trifles / Susan Glaspell -- Cat on a hot tin roof / Tennessee Williams -- Fences / August Wilson -- Anna in the tropics / Nilo Cruz -- Misreadings / Neena Beber -- Sweat / Lynn Nottage.

This collection offers a well-balanced selection of classic and contemporary literature for the introductory literature or literature for composition course. The 40 stories, 200 poems, and 9 plays are arranged chronologically by genre and supported by helpful and concise editorial matter, including a complete guide to reading and writing about literature, biographical notes, and a glossary of literary terms. -- From publisher's description.