The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry [Hardcover]

Jay Parini (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1995

In the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville suggested that the poetry of the new American democratic state, free from the staggering weight of centuries of European aristocracy and tradition, would focus on "man alone... his passions, his doubts, his rare properties and inconceivable wretchedness."

For hundreds of years, American poets have presented their various images of the land and its people. But what is "American poetry?" Is there truly such a thing as an American poetic tradition, spanning over nearly four centuries from colonial times to the turn of the millennium? In The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, Jay Parini, a respected American poet and critic in his own right, offers an authoritative survey of the elusive category that is the poetry of the American people.

The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry covers all of the canonical American poets, from the colonial to the contemporary-Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Adrienne Rich are all included.

But Parini has also selected a broad sampling of poetry from voices that have been heard as widely over the years. Here, for the first time, is a thorough collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry by women, Native American, and African Americans. Within these pages readers will find the many different traditions that make up the expansive collage of American poetry. Here are the Transcendentalists-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau; and the Imagists-William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, H.D., and Carl Sandburg.

Readers will discover also the early twentieth-century movement of African-American poetic expression, known as the Harlem Renaissance-James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Langston Hughes are all solidly represented in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry.

Jay Parini's introduction deftly guides us into the rich tradition of poetry in our country. Whether in search of a well-known classic or a poem that is not yet considered part of the American poetic tradition, readers will find much to enjoy in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The recent torrent of specialized anthologies spotlighting individual styles, ethnicities, periods, and themes argues for at least one new omnibus that embraces the 400-year spectrum of American poetry with ecumenism. Ranging from Anne Bradstreet to Louise Gluck, editor Parini aims to represent "the main schools of poetry that have co-existed in the United States...in proportion to their influence," including more poetry by women and minorities "than one generally finds" in older anthologies. One grants him the latter assertion prima facie?pieces by neglected poets like Leone Adams and Claude McKay are welcome?but the former claim, vague as it is, invites debate, especially since the 20th-century selections seem unduly constrained by a bland, university-press conservatism. How else can one explain the presence of academic contemporaries Dave Smith and Robert Pack at the expense of important avant-garde influences such as George Oppen and William Everson? Or accept Anne Stevenson in the absence of Barbara Guest? The familiar essentials aside, such questionable inclusions and omissions render American poetry in a dimmer light than it deserves. Recommended for large collections only.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry interrogates the poetic tradition of the United States and dismantles it in a manner that encourages readers to reassemble that tradition in new and provocative ways.

(New York Times Book Review )

An essential volume that shows how poetry intersects with our lives and vice versa.

(Library Journal )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 757 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231081227
• ISBN-13: 978-0231081221
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #684,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent resource for teaching, June 29, 2008

By 

The Prof (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry (Hardcover)

I've owned and loved this anthology for a decade. I'm especially fond of its choices in American nature poetry; it follows the transcendentalist line from Emerson and Thoreau and Dickinson through such Emersonian contemporaries as Louise Gluck and Charles Wright. This is also one of the few American poetry anthologies on the market that reaches back to pre-colonial times and moves right into the present. One of its interesting features is its representation of women's voices from the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the 20th century. There are also many African American poets. The book has obviously been through many printings, and over the years the editors have cleaned up copy-editing errors that appeared in the original edition. The introduction is fresh and appealing to students and readers of all levels. A great classroom book, although it's skimpy on the Beats and the West Coast school, and even the New York school (although the selection of poems by John Ashbery is particularly original).

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Praise, with Faint Damning, May 15, 2008

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texcritic (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry (Hardcover)

This is a decent anthology and represents a fair sampling of the major American poets and poetry of our country's literary history. One of its major positives is that it strives hard to cover the span of our poetic history, from Bradstreet to the present day, and it manages to reflect both a nice cross-section of cultural history, as well as the major poetic movements. On the negative side, the book has some strange idiosyncratic features that will distract some readers -- particularly those using this as a textbook. For example, Emily Dickinson's poetry is published here in a conventional form, minus the stylistic dashes and capital letters that we associate with Dickinson's style. Early editors of Dickinson's poetry "cleaned up" these features in Dickinson's work, and it wasn't until the features were replaced some time later that readers became acquainted with Dickinson's work as it was actually written. Why Parini chose to revert to this presentation is inexplicable. Equally inexplicable is his decision to publish an earlier, inferior version of "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died" instead of the version usually included. Likewise, while teaching William Stafford's poetry to a class, I was mortified to discover that the entire last paragraph of Stafford's "At the Bomb Testing Site" was not included in the poem! These are editing/copyediting lapses, but one wonders how on earth they made it through into the final copy. Teachers using this as a class text will also be mystified about the complete dearth of footnotes with poems (imagine students trying to read "The Waste Land" without footnotes), or the absence of biographical material about the writers. These are large matters, but one hopes future editions will rectify them. There aren't many decent single volume end-to-end anthologies of American poetry on the market, so this one serves a function. But someone needs to fix parts of it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars just fine, January 26, 2011

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Chris - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry (Hardcover)

Although this is much less expensive than the Norton Anthologies, you can see where Norton spends the extra money. This is a very bare bones anthology with little in the way of critical superstructure (besides Parini's very good introduction.