?The Poets of New Jersey? celebrates sixty-five extraordinary poets who have lived and worked in New Jersey, from Colonial times to the present. Many of the poets included in this anthology are among America's finest. Stephen Dunn, the Pulitzer Prize poet, writes the Foreword; X. J. Kennedy, the renowned poet (whose comprehensive text, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama, has taught generations of college students), writes the Introduction. The three editors, all poets themselves, had one simple criterion in compiling the works: they "wanted to hear the pure, clear words of the poets who have called this place home." They were interested in the sum of poetic greatness distilled from life in this state?the poetry New Jersey poets have written, whether New Jersey oriented or not. Included: Philip Freneau, Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Kenneth Burke, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Yusef Komunyakaa, C. K. Williams, Paul Muldoon.