The Poems of Philip Freneau, Poet of the American Revolution. Volume 1 (of 3)

Philip Freneau earned his epithet the hard way: by living through the Revolution and versifying its every major moment with a poet's feeling and a pamphleteer's urgency. This first volume gathers his early work, the verses written while the ink on the Declaration was still wet, tracking a young nation's birth in language that burns with conviction. Here are poems about liberty and its costs, about British tyranny and American resolve, about the sea voyages that carried Freneau from journalist to soldier and back again. The editor Fred Lewis Pattee restores poems that time and political favoritism buried, presenting Freneau not as a museum piece but as a voice: rough, passionate, occasionally reckless, and unmistakably American in his refusal to imitate British models. These are not polished salon verses. They are the work of a man who believed poetry should serve the cause of freedom, and who paid for that belief with decades of neglect. For readers curious about the raw, unfiltered voice of the American Revolution, Freneau remains essential.