This spirited anthology of contemporary American poetry focuses on the new poem--the hybrid--a synthesis of traditional and experimental styles.
As Cole Swensen argues in the introduction to this comprehensive new anthology, the long-acknowledged "fundamental division" between experimental and traditional is disappearing in American poetry in favor of hybrid approaches that blend trends from accessible lyricism to linguistic exploration. The focus in American Hybrid is on the blend; the more than seventy poets featured here--including Jorie Graham, Albert Goldbarth, and Lyn Hejinian--have found new and often unique ways to reconfigure the innumerable and sometimes conflicting voices of the past thirty years. The editors have crafted short introductory essays on each of the poets in the anthology, providing biographical backgrounds and positioning them within the current of contemporary poetry. This new anthology is essential reading for those who care about the present moment--and the future--of American verse. 3Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In their introductions, editors Swensen and St. John, both accomplished and forward-thinking poets, outline the contention that spurred this anthology: for a long time, poetry has been divided, or has divided itself, into two basic camps, traditional and experimental. In contemporary American poetry, the editors argue, and the poets collected here demonstrate, these distinctions no longer make sense, as poets now draw equally from both traditions, often in the same poem. Hence these generous selections from 73 poets who seek to blend, in varying degrees, the straightforward clarity and formal rigor of the long poetic tradition with the disjunction, self-consciousness and obscurity of experimental poetics. Some names will be familiar to the casual reader of American poetry (John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass); some are well known in poetry circles (Brenda Hillman, D.A. Powell, Donald Revell); and others are totally new to this kind of anthology, such as the amazing and subtle Martha Ronk (When it is raining it is raining for all time then it isn't) and Bin Ramke, a master of the commingling of old and new. For serious readers of poetry, novices looking for a way in to what's new, and, perhaps especially, for poetry professors, this is a must-have book. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
David St. John has published nine collections of poetry, including The Face. He teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Venice, California.
Cole Swensen's most recent collection is The Glass Age. She teaches at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
Cole Swensen's most recent collection is The Glass Age. She teaches at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I seek the following qualities in a poetry anthology:
1. Introduces me to some poets and poems I have never read before: this anthology has a number of poets whose names I vaguely know but about whose work I know little to nothing. Since they are alongside other poets I do know better and already like, it gives me confidence in the quality of the work that the editors have chosen.
2. The anthology contains expository writing commenting on the place of the poems within the greater literary context: yes! There are two excellent essays by the editors at the beginning of the book.
3. Biographical information about each poet appears somewhere in the book: in fact, the bios introduce each poet's section of work, which is much better than having to constantly flip to an appendix.
4. The book is substantial but not so large that it won't fit in my handbag: this size is perfect. It's much smaller than those Norton anthologies I had to buy for undergrad English classes.
A previous reviewer mentioned that these poems are difficult and not to her taste. I agree that the poems are difficult. Fortunately, difficult poems are exactly my taste. This makes returning to the work again and again much more rewarding for me.
1. Introduces me to some poets and poems I have never read before: this anthology has a number of poets whose names I vaguely know but about whose work I know little to nothing. Since they are alongside other poets I do know better and already like, it gives me confidence in the quality of the work that the editors have chosen.
2. The anthology contains expository writing commenting on the place of the poems within the greater literary context: yes! There are two excellent essays by the editors at the beginning of the book.
3. Biographical information about each poet appears somewhere in the book: in fact, the bios introduce each poet's section of work, which is much better than having to constantly flip to an appendix.
4. The book is substantial but not so large that it won't fit in my handbag: this size is perfect. It's much smaller than those Norton anthologies I had to buy for undergrad English classes.
A previous reviewer mentioned that these poems are difficult and not to her taste. I agree that the poems are difficult. Fortunately, difficult poems are exactly my taste. This makes returning to the work again and again much more rewarding for me.
29 of 38 people found the following review helpful
By Oscar Bermeo
Format:Paperback
I only got through 2/3 of the book (has to go back to my local library) but what I did read was very mixed. My chief concern with this anthology is how it breaks down the tensions in United States Poetry to a "fundamental division" between narrative and experimental texts when all that is explored in this volume is the negotiation between variations in U.S. English non-linear narrative in contemporary academic poetry without putting any focus on hybrid texts outside of academia and/or explore the boundaries of English.
Many of the selections from the poets really only hint at the possibility of hybrid text as the samples rarely show a collision of the two coming together with only a few poets actually able to balance plain language and disrupted text in a single poem or even a few pages. Some of the poets who do show the best of all worlds in this collection include Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Palmer, John Yau and Harryette Mullen.
With a shaky premise to begin with (poetry has always benefited from a collision between various camps, not just a late 20th century argument between academics), a very loose definition of "academic poetry" (probably included because almost every poet is in academia), and a mandate that hybrid poetry can lead us back to a "purer sense of language" and help in the "renaming of the world" (I thought that was the job of all poetry), this collection doesn't offer a plurality of voices but instead seeks to limit the definitions of what new poetry can be.
Many of the selections from the poets really only hint at the possibility of hybrid text as the samples rarely show a collision of the two coming together with only a few poets actually able to balance plain language and disrupted text in a single poem or even a few pages. Some of the poets who do show the best of all worlds in this collection include Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Palmer, John Yau and Harryette Mullen.
With a shaky premise to begin with (poetry has always benefited from a collision between various camps, not just a late 20th century argument between academics), a very loose definition of "academic poetry" (probably included because almost every poet is in academia), and a mandate that hybrid poetry can lead us back to a "purer sense of language" and help in the "renaming of the world" (I thought that was the job of all poetry), this collection doesn't offer a plurality of voices but instead seeks to limit the definitions of what new poetry can be.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was studying abroad in England, missing America a little bit, and I picked this up. Not only did it satisfy my homesickness, it made me aware of poets I had never heard of. I'm in undergraduate, young, and admittedly only mildly literate (on a good day) and trying to rectify said illiteracy. This book has been a great help. The content is challenging and fantastic, if you're willing to dive in without feeling like you understand completely what's going on around you. And rewarding to re-read.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
American Hybrid is a pleasure and an entirely successful anthology. It provides a historical argument for its theme and for the work included, helpful intros to the poets, and a lot of interesting poetry. I haven't loved every poem or poet, but that would be a bit much to ask. The book has introduced me to at least a half a dozen poets that I want to explore further (I've already bought books by two of them) and has given me a sense of the range of what's out there under Swenson's rubric of the hybrid.
People quibble over the logic or value of the category, but I find Swenson's argument both convincing and humble in its acknowledgment of its limitations. All such categories have an element of the arbitrary, including the two (alleged) streams of poetry that the hybrid writers mix and mash. Swenson's hybrid idea closely parallels Stephen Burt's "elliptical" poetry, Joan Houlihan's "post-avant" (ugh ...), and others' (Michael Theune?) "third way" poetics. I'm sure these people could spend a lot of time fighting over the borders and the taxonomy, but collectively they're onto something, and it happens to encompass a lot of the writing that I like most.
If you're among the people who dislike this kind of poetry, you're in luck ... there's no shortage of anthologies that are very much not like this one. Just know what you're getting into. Some highlights for me have been Cal Bedient, Killarney Clary, Andrew Joron, DA Powell, Mary Ruefle, Susan Stewart, Arthur Vogelsang, Anne Waldman... Your mileage is bound to vary, but if you like writing that's playful and open-ended without being self-absorbed or opaque, I think you'll be in for a treat.
People quibble over the logic or value of the category, but I find Swenson's argument both convincing and humble in its acknowledgment of its limitations. All such categories have an element of the arbitrary, including the two (alleged) streams of poetry that the hybrid writers mix and mash. Swenson's hybrid idea closely parallels Stephen Burt's "elliptical" poetry, Joan Houlihan's "post-avant" (ugh ...), and others' (Michael Theune?) "third way" poetics. I'm sure these people could spend a lot of time fighting over the borders and the taxonomy, but collectively they're onto something, and it happens to encompass a lot of the writing that I like most.
If you're among the people who dislike this kind of poetry, you're in luck ... there's no shortage of anthologies that are very much not like this one. Just know what you're getting into. Some highlights for me have been Cal Bedient, Killarney Clary, Andrew Joron, DA Powell, Mary Ruefle, Susan Stewart, Arthur Vogelsang, Anne Waldman... Your mileage is bound to vary, but if you like writing that's playful and open-ended without being self-absorbed or opaque, I think you'll be in for a treat.
17 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this book, cover to cover, slowly, a few poems at a time. Most of the work is post-modern and/or language poetry. I found the intuitive leaps to be confusing and truly made little sense of much of the work. About ten percent, I enjoyed. I also enjoyed the brief biographies given for each poet. This is not to say that this is not an excellent book and a good representation of its particular genre. It is simply not to my taste.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
I only lilked a few of the many included.
American Hybrid:A Norton Anthology of New Poetry: Poems all seem too similar, written to satisfy a critieria ---in this cas "Hybrid" , felt truly uninvolved and rambling.
Published 5 months ago by lynn Schubert
1.0 out of 5 stars
Nowhere to go but up
'American Hybrid' . . . giving a sort of genre-sounding name to work like this--which is, in general, poorly constructed, shallow, and afloat by virtue of its cleverness--is kin to... Read more
Published on May 14, 2010 by A. Wesker
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