This modest Chicago monthly has featured not only many of the 20th century's greatest poets, but also many of their famous poems. It is pleasant to think, given everything that Poetry has meant to literature in the last 100 years and everything it may yet mean to generations of readers that it will not have such troubles in the future.
It is a fitting collection that not only features their work, but helped place them in the pantheon.
This anthology makes clear that American poetry is as powerful, diverse, and vibrant as ever.
It is a fitting collection that not only features their work, but helped place them in the pantheon.
This modest Chicago monthly has featured not only many of the 20th century's greatest poets, but also many of their famous poems. It is pleasant to think, given everything that Poetry has meant to literature in the last 100 years and everything it may yet mean to generations of readers that it will not have such troubles in the future.
The Philadelphia Inquirer - David Yezzi
For the LOVER of poetry there is much to savor here...
The two kinds of anthology—that of summary and that of advocacy—will suffice to define the type of Parisi's book.
Contemporary Poetry Review
Superb and invaluable...comprehensive and thrilling...a veritable history of twentieth-century poetry in English.... A tremendous resource.
For the LOVER of poetry there is much to savor here...
Times-Dispatch - Ron Smith
It is a fitting collection that not only features their work, but helped place them in the pantheon.
The Seattle Times - Richard Wakefield
The two kinds of anthology—that of summary and that of advocacy—will suffice to define the type of Parisi's book.
Contemporary Poetry Review - James Matthew Wilson
For the lover of poetry there is much to savor here...TIMES-DISPATCH
It is a fitting collection that not only features their work, but helped place them in the pantheon.SEATTLE TIMES
...Feature[s] not only many of the 20th century's greatest poets, but also many of their famous poems.PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
...Give[s] a complex and comprehensive look at the magazine's influence during the last century...
...Include[s] virtually every significant poet of the twentieth century.
While the above collection wisely confines itself to the first 50 of Poetry's ninety years, this anthology tries to take in the whole sweep of the magazine's existence, and ends up playing down its most important early years at the expense of its much less illustrious recent ones. Of the 487 pages of verse here, 94 are devoted to the period 1912-1936, or the term of Harriet Monroe's founding editorship. Readers looking for the entire set of Stevens "Pecksniffiana" poems will find some, but not all of them. T.S. Eliot's print debut, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is here, but Pound's Cantos are not (though "In a Station of the Metro" is). These authors are heavily anthologized though, and what proves most interesting are the years between Moeroe and current editor Joseph Parisi's tenures, particularly the '60s editorship of Henry Rago: Ashbery, Baraka (then Jones), Betjeman, Creeley, Hollander, Lowell, Plath, Rich, Snyder, can be found together, and one suspects the work printed during the period went even further out than represented here. Parisi's introduction includes a short bio of Harriet Monroe (calling her "the aging entrepreneur" as she starts the magazine at 51) and points to a perceived lack of "authentic avant-gardes" as a reason for the magazine's recent reactionary emphasis on traditional verse-craft. Nearly 40% of the poems here come from Parisi's watch, and some are excellent. But they fail to represent the explosive range and variety of poetry in English from the last quarter century. (Oct. 25) Forecast: Poetry magazine currently gets 90,000 submissions a year from all over the world. If even a fraction of those sending in their own work seek out this volume, sales should be notable. Given the lack of a scholarly basis for the selections, campus use may be slight, but expect consistent bookseller sales after a big bump at pub. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
This new anthology from Poetry Magazine veritably contains some of the greatest poems written over the last century. Boasting the likes of W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and many more, this extraordinary collection is proof that, as it is worded in the introduction, "Poetry has presented, often for the first time, virtually every poet of note in the twentieth century." The poems in this anthology are arranged in chronological order, which gives you the sense that you are flipping through a sort of history book of modern American verse when reading it. It is a great catch for poetry aficionados as well as for those who have just begun to lend an ear to what some of the most gifted voices in the literary world have to say. I so thoroughly enjoy this book that every time I lay eyes on it I can't help picking it up—even if it is for the hundredth time. It always proves to be an informative treat. Read it. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Ivan R. Dee, 509p. index., Ages 15 to adult.
Individual voices, fresh perspectives, interesting ideas, verbal panache, striking imagery, and perceptive metaphors: these are the qualities editors Parisi and Young look for when choosing work for Poetry, America's most influential poetry magazine. Here, they've collected 600 poems that best mirror the magazine's standards. A Who's Who of American verse, this landmark collection is arranged in chronological order, opening with a poem by Ezra Pound, adviser to founding editor Harriet Monroe, and closing with one by major 20th-century poet W.S. Merwin. Both poems ably comment on the collection. There's groundbreaking work, which first appeared in Poetry and later became part of the canon (e.g., Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning"), as well as work by lesser-known poets (e.g., William Dickey's "The Poet's Farewell to His Teeth"). Readers will also find surprises like Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" from 1913, which has a poetic echo in Tom Disch's "Poems" for Joyce Kilmer from 1978. Including both formal and free verse, these poems range from Chris Wallace-Crabbe's philosophical "The Dead Cartesian" to Billy Collins's playful "Marginalia," which ends "Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love"-a final line suggesting that like the editors, Collins knows a poem when he finds one. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
