Introduction: Making and Remaking American Poetry

Abstract

Te border between Canada and the United States came to be fxed but had been in fux in the nineteenth century, for instance in Maine and the Oregon Territory, when Canada was British North America and the boundaries were set in 1908. Peoples moved across those borders before and afer they were agreed to and the mapping was done. Te borders with Mexico and Canada changed and helped to defne the emerging United States, including the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 and the expansion to Hawaii. American geographical, cultural, and literary identity was shifing while those other bordering identities, including Mexican and Canadian, were also shifing. Indigenous, African, European, Asian, and other identities were part of this story. Te making and remaking of American poetry, the subject of this special issue, is something that the contributors are considering from Canada, what Marshall McLuhan aptly called “a borderline case.”