American Independence in Verse with Bradford Skow

Description

The American Revolution is America’s Iliad and Odyssey: this clash of soldiers and ideals, these heroes and villains, these uncertainties and reverses and triumphs, make up the story we look back to, to understand who we are. The story has been told before, but usually by historians, rarely by poets. The poems in American Independence in Verse tell that story through the radicals who fought for it and the Crown officials who tried to stop it. Moderates, loyalists, and fellow-travelers also have their say. The book begins in 1765, when the Stamp Act stirred the colonies to riots and resistance, and ends in 1776, with the war begun, and Washington’s troops hearing, for the first time, the Declaration of Independence read aloud.

Bradford Skow is a Professor of Philosophy at MIT. His first book of poetry, American Independence in Verse, was published in 2025. He writes about poetry, philosophy, and the arts at mostlyaesthetics.com.