The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry by Rita Dove

What details might wow them to the point that they like poetry and want to write it? To which poets' lives and works. This poetry anthology may one day be a historical artifact, a record not only of great twentieth-century American poetry but also of the literary climate of the. Students flipping through this anthology's table of contents, biographical notes, and almost four hundred poems will, teachers hope, be drawn in. Most students cracking open a poetry anthology for the first time recognize the names of only a few very popular poets-Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes. McClatchy, in a college poetry course that I discovered the works of William Matthews, Kay Ryan, and Yusef Komunyakaa. It was while reading The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (2003), edited by J. Poetry anthologies promise high school and university students an affordable and thorough introduction to poetry. And in this time of economic recession when government programs are cutting costs, we cannot overlook the prevalence of anthologies in schools. This poetry anthology may one day be a historical artifact, a record not only of great twentieth-century American poetry but also of the literary climate of the early twenty-first century.

However, anthologies play more significant roles than simply constituting a 'Hall of Fame' of literary achievement. Who can forget Dove's equally biting response? An extreme example of this sense of intense disappointment is demonstrated In Helen Vendler's November 2011 review of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove, in which she slammed the book's 'multicultural inclusiveness' that underrepresents canonical greats like Wallace Stevens and James Merrill. But in the eyes of this audience, especially In those of its self-invested guardians of poetry, an anthology often is disappointing because of whom it leaves out or includes. Penguin.Ī poetry anthology's table of contents is inevitably a 'who's who' list talked about by serious poets and writers. The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry.

The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry by Rita Dove