Customer Reviews

Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Vol. 2: From Postwar to Millennium

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Rothenberg and Joris have assembled an absolutely stunning collection of modernist and postmodern poets in this fat volume. Not only has he included some well-known but seldom anthologized writers like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, but he has included Fluxus artist/writers like Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, Emmett Williams and many other important, but lesser-known poets. Nearly every poet that one would expect to find in a good anthology is to be found - and many people and writers that one might not expect to find in a poetry anthology are also found here. And once found, the choices seem obvious and not forced or contrived.

With so many great poems and poets to choose from, most readers will find at least one omission, (where's Leonard Cohen? Charles Bukowski? Sylvia Plath?) but with such a huge scope these are mostly forgivable. After all it is easy to find volumes of work by Bukowski and Cohen, but a volume like this anthology presents the opportunity to expose us to equally interesting and lesser known writers.

Most of the poems are followed by a brief quote from the poet and a short vignette about the poet written be Rothenberg or Joris. Anybody who is serious about the enjoyment of reading and writing new poetry will enjoy this book and will want to add it to their library.

Both of these volumes are tremendous works illustrating a wide range of poetry from a wide range of voices. I love how the sections are delineated, and there is a wealth of information about poets, poems, schools of thought and poetics along with the actual poems. I learned a lot about poetry just by reading these two volumes. This is truly an example of wonderful, dedicated editing.

This service was excellent. I realized I forgot to place an order for one of my textbooks and this arrived more quickly than some of the books that I had ordered over a week earlier. Terrific! Used book is spectacular condition and for a great price.

This book is perfect for my course it is helping me a lot. It has some good poetry in it and pieces written about poetry.

When the history of postmodernism is written, and let's hope that is sooner rather than later, if you know what I'm saying (and if you're a postmodernist I suppose you have to concede that you do not, nor does anybody), this book will make an excellent museum piece. When future generations leaf through "Poems for the Millennium" they will wonder, What - in God's name - were those people thinking! The book has no real answers, but plenty of examples. Answers are almost impossible, you see, because language is meaningless to the postmodern mind. Words don't mean anything, and it is with this basis that the poetry in this book was written. Now, this makes a poet's job rather easy. With no meaning there can be only one standard by which to write - namely, just how meaningless can I make it? Not that there are degrees of meaninglessness. But one must assume that surely a book like this exists because somebody has determined that some of this is meaningful. There is, in other words, meaning in meaninglessness.

Another safe assumption is that there is apparently some kind of strange credibility among the academic literati that attaches to people who become expert in the recognition and publishing of meaninglessness. Good work if you can get it. Great example of postmodernism! you declare about a "poem" that simply lists words in a random order. Print it! Once your reputation is made, who can argue? And so Rothenberg and Joris go down as foremost experts among the intelligentsia in how to recognize meaningful meaninglessness when one sees it. And so where the laymen sees randomness and nothing, our experts can tell us we are witnessing the experimental, the avant-garde. This is groundbreaking stuff, you see. We are pushing the envelope. Or, to put it into a postmodern verse: glass rectify bard and sugar hedgehog. (Whoa! I think I just blew my own mind.)

Now, to be fair, there is some manner of explanation within the pages of "Poems for the Millennium." There are manifestos by the poets themselves. Unfortunately, these make no more sense than the poems. (Of course they don't - it's postmodernism; haven't you been paying attention?)

It is with little doubt that the people represented in this book are sitting somewhere giggling at the fact that their pointless drivel has been not only taken seriously, but anthologized to boot. Like adolescent kids, which is fitting because when the history of postmodernism is written, I suspect the period will be likened to poetry's adolescence. This is the period we all broke away from our parents and tried different things. We wanted to rebel. Why? Because that's what kids do. They thumb their noses at convention. (What are you rebelling against, Johnny? What have you got?) It's all a part of the growth process, you know. One hopes a level of maturity will soon replace this moment in history. And we see it already, do we not? Literary journals seem to be swinging back towards publishing works that are actually ABOUT things. It's a nice trend. Hopefully, soon, we'll be able to look back and laugh at our gangly selves - acne, bad hair, and all - and say, Cripes, am I glad that's over!

"Poems for the Millennium." Enjoy it. It is close to 900 pages but do not let this overwhelm you. After all, you only need to pick out one or two pieces at random, and you'll pretty much have read the whole thing. Meaninglessness, you see, is good like that. It can be covered quickly and then you can move on. History, it is a certainty, will do just this with the postmodernists.

This book has become my bible. The selections is incredible, there are poems, manifestos, and commentary. The Olson, Duncan, Creeley, John Cage, and Nathanial Mackey selections are very impressive. After obtaining this book I realized how important it is that I have taken a class taught by Professor Joris. JerryRothenberg is, of course, also an amazing poet and this work shows this dedication to the field.

Great for beginners, students, and veterans alike.

if you get this volume you have to get the first volume and the OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY. if modern american poetry is something that gets you goin, then these volumes are for you.

rothenberg does a great job of introducing and giving information, critiques, etc of the poetry encased in these volumes.

dig it, man. dig it.

This is the first poetry anthology published by a university or commercial press that covers just about the full range of poetry, as I know it. True, in many areas (e.g., pluraesthetic poetry, or poetry that mixes expressive modalities such as visual poetry) it's twenty or more years behind the times, but when you compare it to such duds as David Lehman's Wilbur-to-Ashbery "best American poetry" anthologies, which are forty years behind the times on all fronts, and the Norton thing on "post-modernist poetry," which is only within twenty years of the times in its inclusion of specimens of "sprung-grammar poetry" (my term for what most people refer to as "language poetry"), it's hard to fault it for that. Hence, I recommend it to all serious readers of poetry