American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics [Paperback]

Claudia Rankine (Editor), Lisa Sewell (Editor)

Book Description

Series: American Poets in the 21st Century | Publication Date: July 9, 2007

Understanding the current moment in poetry can be a difficult task, as the reader must sort among the avant-garde and mainstream, the traditional and the experimental. A welcome introduction to contemporary poetics, this collection represents one of the first attempts to chart the progress of a new generation of poets. Each chapter focuses on one poet, and includes a selection of poems, a brief statement of purpose by the poet, and a critical essay by a notable scholar. Working in forms ranging from the post-confessional lyric to documentary poetics, from the prose poem and the sonnet to sound poetry, these thirteen poets rank among the most notable and distinct of recent years. American Poets in the 21st Century will serve as a useful and enlightening guide for any reader interested in how new American poetry can look, feel, and sound. The enclosed CD includes each of the thirteen poets reading their work.

Poets include: Joshua Clover, Stacy Doris, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, Myung Mi Kim, Mark Levine, Tracie Morris, Mark Nowak, D.A. Powell, Juliana Spahr, Karen Volkman, Susan Wheeler, and Kevin Young.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"American Poets in the 21st Century offers an intelligent map of innovative currents within the recent generation of U.S. poets. Rankine and Sewell have made a brilliant selection among poets for whom linguistic experiment, public critique, and lyric expressivity are no longer antagonists." (Michael Davidson, professor of literature, University of California, San Diego )

About the Author

CLAUDIA RANKINE is the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College and author, most recently, of Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004). LISA SEWELL is a professor of English at Villanova University and the author of Name Withheld (2006).

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (July 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819567280
• ISBN-13: 978-0819567284
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #178,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accompanying audio CD of readings from each poet rounds out this superb text, October 6, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Paperback)

Poets and English professors Claudia Rankine and Lisa Sewell have meticulously assembled an ideal introduction to contemporary American poets and poetry in American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics. The heart of American Poets in the 21st Century is comprised of the voices of thirteen notable contributing poets: Joshua Clover, Stacy Doris, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, Myung Mi Kim, Mark Levine, Tracie Morris, Mark Nowak, D.A. Powell, Juliana Spahr, Karen Volkman, Susan Wheeler, and Kevin Young. Rounding out the poems themselves are a brief statement from each poet, and thirteen critical essays offering historic context and close analysis of how individual works of poetry can transform American cultural understanding of the art form's look, feel, and sound. An accompanying audio CD of readings from each poet rounds out this superb text, ideal for self-study or college classrooms and poetry libraries.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The audio CD is a great companion, August 22, 2007

By 

Paul A. Baker "communicator" (Madison, Wis., US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Paperback)

I snapped up a copy of this book as soon as I heard about it. The audio CD would be useful on my Wordsalad radio program, and the text would bring me up to date on a number of poets doing exciting work. The sounds of these authors' voices are a welcome addition to the book and to my program.

This collection focuses on 13 poets, each of whom revises the traditions of the previous century. Each chapter includes a selection of one writer's poems, a brief artist's statement, and a critical essay that provides a historical context as well as an analysis of the ways the specific work alters and extends the understanding of what the new American poetries can look, feel, and sound like. In addition to the recordings of each poet reading some of his or her work, additional audio files are available online for listening and download.

6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Insanely Academic, June 19, 2009

By 

Teop Tnomrev "Goodpuppy" (Vermont, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Paperback)

I doubt that the casual poetry lover will enjoy this book. I just don't find the poetry to be all that compelling - much of it having the same tone and aesthetics, to me, as poetry written 40 years ago. I seriously doubt that the average American has read any of these poets or would be able to tell their poems apart from those written in the 50's or 60's. Perhaps just a handful, literally. But apparently the publisher and essayists feel these poems are representative of the 21rst Century - new in style, form and content.

My main beef is the over-the-top academese in which these essays are written. This is poetry expounded by academics for the sake of poets and academics. I can turn to any page at random (and am right now) and come up with chestnuts like these:

"Central to Spahr's work of moving the poem away from poetry's implicit emphasis on individuals and toward collectivities is the understanding that collectivities are often composed against a constitutive outside." P. 144

"Morris effectively valorizes somatic experience to dispossess and repossess the language of identity. This is no hairsplitting intellectual argument..." p. 226

"As the remainder of this essay will demonstrate, the "cobbled solutions" Wheeler devised in her own attempts to invigorate poetry's radical cultural force involve foregrounding, both formally and in her poems' content, the contemporary "problems" of "steamroller" consumerism/commodification and of artistic assimilation so as ultimately to recast them as opportunities and resources." p. 306

"In other poems, performivity asserts the constructed identity over the essential self when poems speak from the male voices of Casanova..." p. 58

"She tests the potentials of the work she samples in relation to their points of contact and fracture -- where the palindrome meets the merry-go-round. What happens to both structures upon contact and what futurities are proposed at the point of contact?" p. 284

I could do this all day. The various essayists veer in and out of this near-incomprehensible acadamese, (some more so, some less). It is not a virtue to write like this, but a failing.