The Stamp of Class

The Stamp of Class is about reading poetry with an awareness of class and its themes. While numerous works have taken up the question of race and gender as they relate to literary creation, no single book has probed the interplay between class and American poetry. The nine essays in Gary Lenhart's book deal with the question of class as reflected in the works of Tracie Morris, Tillie Olsen, Melvin Tolson, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, and others. The work is rooted in the author's own experiences as a working-class poet and teacher, and is the result of more than a decade of exploration.