The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry

"People who don’t know a lot about poetry, including whether they like it, need a great anthology, that is not so heavy to carry it around. For years I’ve used David Lehman’s Oxford Book of American Poetry . But Rita Dove’s Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry brings readers right up to the poets of today; there isn’t another anthology that does that. She devotes about half of its pages to recent poets. To save room for the poets of today, Dove made the radical decision to reduce selections from the early twentieth century to some representative examples. Rita Dove has a great instinct for the best poetry to lead readers to other poems. What Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens poems prompt readers to find more? Rita Dove chooses them with real skill. Dove thinks of American poetry as telling the story of who we think we are as Americans. That definition leads Dove to include many poets who were not included in major anthologies before, poets who may not have had access to publication because of their race or class. This anthology offers a more complete picture of American poetry. It’s very compelling and Dove’s introduction is unpretentious and fun to read. Limiting the poems given prominence to those that fulfill certain aesthetic criteria leaves to the side too much great work. Readers don’t only read poetry to admire craftsmanship. Poems help us understand who we are, they help us understand our culture. Like Dove, I think of poetry as having a much broader set of functions than simply achieving formal excellence. That is why I value this book. Poetry is an art form that is perfect for our digital world. It is accessible, not only though the books I’ve named, but also through websites like the Poetry Foundation . One can have an intense intellectual experience, a deeply pleasurable experience, sometimes a deeply personal experience, with a small portable work of art. Many poems fit into five minutes of spare time. Isn’t it better to read a poem than the your 40th blog of the day? What else refreshes our senses and our sense of the world—and fits on our phone?"