"The very existence of this book is news, and its contents are exquisite literature."—Philadelphia Inquirer
A breathtaking, incomparable overview of American poetry at the turn of the millennium, from experimental language poetry to traditional formal verse, with all the vital, monumental stops between, The Body Electric captures the spirit of contemporary American poetry. Among the 180 poets included in this collection are Ai, John Ashbery, John Berryman, Charles Bukowski, Lucille Clifton, Carolyn Forche, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Kenneth Koch, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Derek Walcott, plus a generous array of exciting new poets from recent years. The breadth and innovation of American poetry as well as the shifting styles and tastes of over a quarter of a century are represented in this volume. No other anthology gives such a complete and wide-ranging representation of American poetry today.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Whether you praise it or disdain it, there is no more visible venue for new poetry that the American Poetry Review (APR), which since 1972 has filled its homely tabloid pages with work by poets both belaureled and obscure. But you won't find many poems from the latter among the roughly 800 selected here. Almost every na e is familiar -- A. R. Ammons, John Ashbery, Lucile Clifton, W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich, Charles Simic, Gerald Stern, and Derek Walcott -- and some -- John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Charles Olson, Frank O'Hara, and Sylvia Plath -- are downright monumental. The result is a broad collective view of the American poet's concern between the waning of the Vietnam War and the rise of the dot-com day trader. It's fun to move from Jack Gilbert's skin-tight lyrics to Allen Ginsberg's baggy monologs in the space of a few pages or to compare the rhetorical similarities of Li-Young Lee and Denise Levertov via the accident of alphabetical adjacency. Harold Bloom's introduction, predictably contentious, faintly damns what follows for not being Whitmanic enough, but most readers aren't Bloom, and for some this anthology will serve as an amiable bedside companion for lovers of poetry everywhere. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
The book enlightens and heartens, and gives me hope that standards of excellence will survive into the next century. -- Harold Bloom
The very existence of this book is news, and its contents are exquisite literature. -- Philadelphia Inquirer
The very existence of this book is news, and its contents are exquisite literature. -- Philadelphia Inquirer
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where's the beef?,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Body Electric: 25 Years of America's Best Poetry from the American Poetry Review (Hardcover)
There are a lot of poems in here but you look far and wide for something really good. I mean, sure, there are the people we already knew were good -- C.K. Williams, Eavan Boland, Frank O'Hara and et cetera et cetera -- but with a book this big you want a few surprises, you want to find some new stuff you didn't know about before. And for me, that didn't really happen. Philip Larkin's "Aubade" is maybe the best poem here -- and maybe the best poem about death ever written -- though what it's doing in a book of AMERICAN poetry I can't figure out (I guess it was just too good to exclude). They put Seamus Heaney in, too, which makes me wonder why they left out Paul Muldoon -- he's been living in New Jersey for years now, and writes poems as good as anything in here (and better than 99% of it). Go to your local bookstore and look through this monster -- maybe you'll have better luck than me, and find something thrilling -- but don't buy it.
1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bought this for poetry class.,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Body Electric: 25 Years of America's Best Poetry from the American Poetry Review (Hardcover)
Bought this for a poetry class, if was OK. Not really my style, was more the teachers taste.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
