American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker [Hardcover]

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

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Until nearly the end of the 19th century, American poetry remained in its infancy. To be sure, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had already produced their epochal (and diametrically opposed) masterpieces. But these were sui generis eccentrics, working on the fringes of a culture still in thrall to its Old World origins. Only with the dawning of the 20th century did American poets manage to cut the umbilical cord, and with astonishing results. Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Claude McKay, and T.S. Eliot all seemed to appear out of thin air, imparting their accents--mandarin or bucolic or, in McKay's case, definitively uptown--to the modernist uproar. This artistic explosion has already been the subject of numerous studies (including such classics as Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era and Ann Douglas's Terrible Honesty), and even more numerous anthologies. But for sheer splendor and big-tent inclusiveness, American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker looks to be an essential starting point.

Weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages, Volume One is the work of Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, and Marjorie Perloff. This poetic Gang of Five has made a number of decisions that will delight some readers and rankle others. For instance, they've elected to include song lyrics from the likes of W.C. Handy, Ma Rainey, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. (Doubtless these remain diminished without the music--but who could be so churlish as to exclude the tongue-twisting couplets from "Anything Goes"?) They've also thrown in a variety of very minor works by very major writers, such as "Terminus," Edith Wharton's breathless account of her one-night stand with boy toy Morton Fullerton.

But these are truly peccadilloes. There are hundreds of poems here, representing more than 80 authors, and thumbing through the selections by Marianne Moore or Robinson Jeffers or James Weldon Johnson or Robert Frost should be enough to send most readers into linguistic rapture. Lesser figures, from Sara Teasdale to H.P. Lovecraft, get their days in the sun. So too do complete obscurities like George Sterling or Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (whose capsule biography suggests that she may have been the most unhappy of a notoriously unhappy lot). Poetry lovers are free to argue themselves hoarse over who got the short end of the stick--and indeed, the relatively small slice of the pie allotted to T.S. Eliot says a great deal about the transience of literary reputation. But anthologies are by their very nature imperfect, and it's hard to imagine a more welcome, less imperfect one than this. --James Marcus

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1000 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (March 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883011779
• ISBN-13: 978-1883011772
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 4.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #318,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is everybody happy?, May 4, 2000

By 

Jim Kibble - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (Hardcover)

The real job of the anthologist is not, of course, to assemble anthologies but to anger and annoy readers. Only census takers have more doors slammed in their innocent faces. That said, a few words in defense of this excellent volume. Yes, there's plenty of second-tier or third-tier verse here, and those in search of pure poetry (no rocks, no soda, shaken not stirred) should probably save their pennies and buy the LOA volumes devoted to Frost, Stevens, etc etc. But a book like this one does give a splendid sense of cultural context. Sometimes the giants loom only larger when they're stuck in a line-up with their diminutive peers. And some of those lesser lights are actually quite talented, too. So unless you're truly fixated on iambic quality control, you should find much to love, and even more to like, in the capacious and paper-thin pages of APTTCV1.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Familiar Faces, But You May Find New ONes To Love!, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (Hardcover)

Charles Erskine Scott Wood's "The Poet in theDesert"---"I have come to the lean and stricken land//Whichfears not God, that I may meet my soul..." Wow, now there's a place to start a survey of a century's poetry (or almost, since Volume 2 doesn't go all the way through to 1999 in poetic samplings.) Only this isn't a desert. It's a feast. : )

A new poet for me was Frances Desmond (excerpts from "Chippewa Music") and I wish there were more than 2 pages of her brief, subtle, lovely poems that made me think of Japanese haiku. A poet worth seeking out for lovely moments of reading like "it will resound finely//the sky//when I come making a noise".

Who is generously represented? Frost, WAllace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Pound, H.D, Marianne Moore, Millay. T.S.Eliot!-- 14 poems and 50+ pages for his works.

There were other new names for me (I guess I"m not as widely read poetically as I would like. As someone who appreciates spirituality in poetry, finding Anna H. Branch was a treat--"Ye stolid, homely, visible things//Above you all brood glorious wings" and "It took me ten days//To read the Bible through--//Then I saw what I saw,//And I knew what I knew."

The unfortunately named Adelaide Crapsey nevertheless has poems of sober beauty and lyrical melancholy---"Keep thou//Thy tearless watch//All night but when the blue dawn//Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!//Then weep!" Glad to meet her at last.

For those who enjoy odd little pleasures, there are forty pages of poetry by that singular personage: Gertrude Stein. "I have tried earnestly to express//Just what I guess will not distress//Nor even oppress or yet caress" --or how about?-- "What do you think of watches.//Collect lobsters//And sweetbreads//and a melon,//and salad,"

I'd rather collect poetry....to read while I eat that lobster and melon.

An enjoyable and varied collection for any American reader. It was rather more fun than Volume 2, but then, when you have Ezra and Gertrude and Wallace S. and VachelL. and T.S. and H.D., you are bound to have a ripping time.

*Mir* END

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "What thou lovest well is thy true heritage", January 7, 2002

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (Hardcover)

Although not widely read and appreciated, American poetry underwent a renaissance in the Twentieth Century. At some point, readers will look back at our Twentieth Century poetry as a benchmark of literature and a guide to the thoughts, feelings, and events of our difficult century.

In this, the first of four projected volumes covering the Twentieth Century, the Library of America gives access to a treausre of reading, moving, elevating, and disturbing. The book consists of readings from 85 (by my count) poets. The poets, are arranged chronologically by the poet's birthday. The earliest writer in the volume is Henry Adams (born 1838) and the concluding writer is Dorothy Parker (born 1893). Some writers that flourished later in life, such as Wallace Stevens, thus appear in the volume before works of their peers, such as Pound and Elliot, who became famous earlier.

For me, the major poets in the volume are (not surprising choices here), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot, Marianne Moore. They are represented by generous selections,including Elliot's Waste Land, Steven's Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, and several Pound Canto's given in their entirety.

It is the mark of a great literary period that there are many writers almost equally meriting attention together with the great names. There are many outstanding writers here, some known, some unknown. To name only a few, I would includeE.A Robinson, James Weldon Johnson, Adelaide Crapsey, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale, H.D. Robinson Jeffers, John Crowe Ransom, Conrad Aiken, Samuel Greenberg. It would be easy to go on.

There are different ways to read an anthology such as this. One way is to browse reading poems as they catch the reader's eye. Another way is to read favorite poems the reader already knows.

I would suggest making the effort to read the volume through from cover to cover. Before beginning the paricular poet, I would suggest reading the biographical summary at the end of the volume. These are short but excellent and illuminate the authors and the poetry. The notes are sparse, but foreign terms in Pound and Elliot's poetry are translated, and we have selections from Elliot's and Marianne Moore's own notes.

By reading the volume through,one gets a sense of continuity and context. Then, the reader can devote attention to individual poems. Some twentieth century works, such as those by Pound, Elliott,Moore Stevens are notoriously difficult. Read the works through,if you are coming to them for the first time, and return to them later.

I was familiar with many of the poems in the book before reading the anthology but much was new to me. I learned a great deal. My favorite poet remains Wallace Stevens, partly because he comibined the life of a man of affairs, as an attorney and insurance executive, with deep art. This remains an ideal for me. It is true as well for W.C. Williams, although I am less fond of his poetry.

The title to this review is taken from "Libretto" by Ezra Pound,
(page 371). It is the best single sentence summation I can think of for the contents of this volume.