American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 2 : E.E. Cummings to May Swenson [Hardcover]

Robert Hass (Compiler), John Hollander (Compiler), Carolyn Kizer (Compiler), Nathaniel Mackey (Compiler), Marjorie Perloff (Compiler)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These two volumes make up the first half of the largest anthology of 20th-century American poetry ever attempted. Over 200 poets are represented, all born before 1914, and presented in birth-date order. The scale here is unprecedented, and the spectrum broad, inclusive and generous. The effect is breathtaking. The first volume begins with anonymous ballads, establishing a theme of popular song that is sustained throughout both volumes, including blues, folks songs and Broadway tunes. This suggests the music that was in the air at the time much of this work was being written, as well as asserting the value of these songs as poetry in their own right. "I can tell the wind is rising/ leaves trembling on the trees/ umm hmm hmm hmm/ all I need my little sweet woman/ and to keep my company" (Robert Johnson, vol. 2). The emphasis in vol. 1 is on the richness of modernism, with enormous selections of Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot. Several of these are long enough to comprise an entire volume of selected poems. (Mina Loy gets more than the usual page or two.) The selections are solidly edited, presenting the most representative and well-known poems across each writer's oeuvre. The second volume includes many more poets, and tends toward shorter selections, though Hart Crane is featured prominently. Multiple and simultaneous layers of American poetics are represented side-by-side in both volumes: lyricism, early confessional poetry, Imagism, light verse, Objectivism, the Harlem Renaissance, hoaxes, the Fugitives, among others. One of the greatest pleasures of these books is discovering (or re-discovering) poets like Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Lola Ridge, John G. Neihardt or dadaist Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, energetic and distinct poets who have long since been dropped from most cullings, or were never included in the first place. This anthology, edited by Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey and Marjorie Perloff, will be an invaluable and lasting resource to anyone interested in American poetry. Its inclusive take on the multiplicity of work leaves all the differences intact, all the layers in context. It brilliantly illuminates the shifting substance of American poetry. (Apr.) FYI: Geoffrey O'Brien is editor-in-chief of the Library of America, and the author of The Times Square Story and other nonfiction, as well as of Floating City: Selected Poems 1978-1995. His The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading is due from Counterpoint in June.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Part of the distinguished Library of America series, this impressive anthology was edited by Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, and Marjorie Perloff, who arranged the poets chronologically by date of birth. Readers will appreciate the diversity of the poetry, including generous selections of the high moderns (Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and Theodore Roethke). There is also vers de societ (Dorothy Parker, Phyllis McGinley, Ogden Nash, and Virginia Adair). African American writers include Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay. Even musicians and composers are well represented (Woody Guthrie, Bessie Smith, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein). The two volumes contain more than 1500 poems by over 200 different poets, with excellent biographical and textual notes and an index of first lines. Essential for all poetry collections.
-Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Findlay, IL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1000 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (March 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883011787
• ISBN-13: 978-1883011789
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #727,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sublime to Silly--an interesting century..cut short, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

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This review is from: American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 2 : E.E. Cummings to May Swenson (Hardcover)

I've added the two volumes of this anthology to my poetry collection. I'm enjoying the perusal of them greatly--some poets are fresh to me, some old familiars. A few...er...um...well, I wonder why the heck they're here! (The gibberish of "A Purplexicon of Dissynthegration" and "Mater Dolorosa")

You can sing along to "Ol' Man River" or "Brother Can You Spare a Dime", revisit cummings' "Olaf glad and big", or dive into the generous selection of the excellent Elizabeth Bishop poems. I was pleased to see selections from "The Love Poems of Marichiko"(Kenneth Rexroth). How delicious and sensual. "I cannot forget / the perfumed dusk inside the / tent of my black hair..." Langston Hughes is given a good amount of space, as is Roethke (although I'd have been happy with MORE Roethke, personally). You'll find plenty of Ogden Nash selections to remind you of why you loved them so as a youth.

Of the poets unfamiliar to me, I enjoyed sampling Genevieve Taggard:"Try tropic for your balm / try storm / and after storm calm./ Try snow of heaven, heavy, soft and slow, / brilliant and warm./ Nothing will help, and nothing do much harm." (from "Try Tropic") Also unfamiliar was Hildegarde Flanner ("Silence braided her fingers in my hair / and put her ankles close to mine in bed...") and Janet Lewis ("A creature fresh from birth / Clings to the screen door / Heaving damp heavy wings.")

It's such a shame that the second volume didn't close out the century. Where's the rest of the century?

I grieve the absence of three of my fave poets (Carolyn Forche & Denise Levertov & Adrienne Rich). Somehow, an American poetry anthology without Levertov just seems so unfinished. And expanding the timeline would have allowed for some of the wonderful Latina poets to have a spot. Why not represent the full Century?

Ah, well.

*Mir*

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cummings to Swenson, April 4, 2000

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[e-mail] (Carmichael, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 2 : E.E. Cummings to May Swenson (Hardcover)

After "American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume 1," Volume 2 seems kind of anti-climactic. While the people covered --- from E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) to May Swenson (1913-1989) --- produced work of great genius, most of their best just don't seem on par with William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, or Ezra Pound. Still, what great poetry it all is. The most space is bestowed to Cummings, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Louis Zukofsky, Robert Penn Warren, George Oppen, Charles Olson, and Elizabeth Bishop. Crane's "The Bridge" is printed complete.

The reader will have a few quibbles. I think more of Cummings's poems should have been included, and where is W. H. Auden (1907-1973)? He came to the U.S. in 1939 and became an American citizen: why couldn't the editors have included his poems written as an American citizen, since they *are* American poems? Yet these quibbles do not override the pleasure of the whole. I myself can hardly wait for volume 3: if it will cover 20 years as this volume does, then we will be treated with the likes of Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, A. R. Ammons, Allen Ginsberg, James Wright, and Sylvia Plath.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "My hand in yours, Walt Whitman --so--", January 29, 2002

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Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 2 : E.E. Cummings to May Swenson (Hardcover)

This volume is the second of a projected four volume anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry in the Library of America series. American poetry richly deserves this extensive treatment, and this series may serve to introduce America's poets to a growing number of readers.

This volume begins with E.E.Cummings (born 1894) and concludes with May Swenson (born 1913) The volume has almost an embarrassment of riches. By my count there are 122 separate poets included. The book includes a brief biography of each writer included which is invaluable for reading the book.

As with any anthology of this nature,the selection is a compromise between inclusiveness and quality. Readers may quarrel with the relative weight given to various poets in terms of number of pages, and with the inclusion or exclusion of writers. (I was disappointed that a poet I admire, Horace Gregory, gets only two pages, for example). Overall, it is a wonderful volume and includes some greatpoetry.

There are favorites and familiar names here and names that will be familiar to few. A joy of a book such as this is to see favorites and to learn about poets one hasn't read before.

A major feature of this volume is its emphasis on diversity -- much more so than in volume 1 or in the Library of America's 19th century poetry anthologies. There are many Jewish poets (including Reznikoff, a favorite ofmine, Zukofsky, Alter Brody, Rose Drachler, George Oppen, Karl Shapiro, and others) and even more African-American Poets (Lanston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Waring Cuney, Sterling Brown, Arna Bontemps, Robert Hayden and many more.) There are also selections from blues and popular songs which to me is overdone.

Of the poets unknown to me, I enjoyed particularly Lorine Niedecker, Laura Riding, and Janet Lewis -- women are well represented in this volume.

I have taken the title of this review from the Cape Hatteras section of "The Bridge" by Hart Crane.(page 229) Crane has more pages devoted to him than any other writer in the volume and deservedly so. "The Bridge" and "Voyages" are presented complete together with some of the shorter poems. This tragic, tormented and gifted writer tried in The Bridge to present a vision of America mystical in character, celebratory of the merican experience, and inclusive in its diversity. The poem is a worthy successor to the poetry of Whitman who is celebrated in it. The title of the review,I think, captures both Crane's poem as well as the goal of the volume as a whole in capturing something of the diversity of experience reflected in 20th Century American Verse.