| 1919 | Yale Series of Younger Poets. Yale University issues its first volume in the annual competition to select the best first poetry collection by a writer under the age of forty. Winners have included poets such as Paul Engle, James Agee, Muriel Rukeyser, William Meredith, Adrienne Rich, and John Ashbery. |
| 1934 | American Song. The Iowan poet's first collection prompts comparisons with Walt Whitman in its exuberant energy and affirmation of American experience. The title poem wins the 1933 Century of Progress Prize sponsored by Poetry. |
| 1936 | Break the Heart's Anger. Written while Engle was a Rhodes scholar, the poems take to task American materialism and pettiness with a style that is described by one reviewer as the "full long breath of a Whitman, and hard-hitting fist of a Sandburg." |
| 1939 | Corn. The poet celebrates his native Iowa in this collection. As critic Selden Rodman observes, compared to his earlier work, the collection is "less pretentious, more honest, quieter, it quickens our hope that the Whitman tradition may still give the Wallace Stevenses and Delmore Schwartzes competition." |
| 1941 | West of Midnight. Engle affirms American light in opposition to the darkness descending on Europe in a series of Whitmanesque celebrations of American values. |
| 1941 | Always the Land. The poet's first novel takes an intimate look at Iowa farm life. |
The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
