American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry [Paperback]

David St. John (Editor), Cole Swensen (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Norton Anthology | Publication Date: March 30, 2009

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. 3

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.)
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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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 Original edition (March 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393333752
• ISBN-13: 978-0393333756
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars does what an anthology should do, April 8, 2009

By 

Heather Moss "poet in the library" (Baltimore) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (Paperback)

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.

23 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Experiment for Experiment's Sake, September 23, 2009

By 

Oscar Bermeo "Oscar Bermeo" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (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.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars challenging and fantastic, January 9, 2011

By 

Isabel Archer - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (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.