American Cycle, a sequence of long poems inspired by our folklore and past, was written over forty-seven years. Its themes are love, local mythology, history, justice, memory, accomplishment, time.American Cycle holds Spanish words loaned from Old California, rough colloquialisms in Paul Bunyan, the power of African-American vernacular English in John Henry, bare oratory in Chief Joseph, old west phrases in Wyatt Earp, circus ballyhoo in P. T. Barnum, aviation jargon in Amelia Earhart, backwoods dialect in Blue Ridge. As Walt Whitman says, "I hear America singing, the varied carols. . .”