Editor:
John Brehm | Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA | April 3, 2006 |
Language: English | ISBN-10: 019516251X | 1185 pages | File type: PDF |
13.41 mb
Here is the eagerly awaited new edition of The Oxford
Book of American Poetry brought completely up to date and dramatically
expanded by poet David Lehman. It is a rich, capacious volume, featuring
the work of more than 200 poets-almost three times as many as the 1976
edition. With a succinct and often witty head note introducing each
author, it is certain to become the definitive anthology of American
poetry for our time.
Lehman has gathered together all the works
one would expect to find in a landmark collection of American poetry,
from Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry to Stevens’s The Idea of Order at
Key West, and from Eliot’s The Waste Land to Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in
a Convex Mirror. But equally important, the editor has significantly
expanded the range of the anthology. The book includes not only writers
born since the previous edition, but also many fine poets overlooked in
earlier editions or little known in the past but highly deserving of
attention. The anthology confers legitimacy on the Objectivist poets;
the so-called Proletariat poets of the 1930s; famous poets who fell into
neglect or were the victims of critical backlash (Edna St. Vincent
Millay); poets whose true worth has only become clear with the passing
of time (Weldon Kees). Among poets missing from Richard Ellmann’s 1976
volume but published here are W. H. Auden, Charles Bukowski, Donald
Justice, Carolyn Kizer, Kenneth Koch, Stanley Kunitz, Emma Lazarus, Mina
Loy, Howard Moss, Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, James Schuyler,
Elinor Wylie, and Louis Zukosky. Many more women are represented:
outstanding poets such as Josephine Jacobsen, Josephine Miles, May
Swenson. Numerous African-American poets receive their due, and
unexpected figures such as the musicians Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and
Robert Johnson have a place in this important work.
This stunning
collection redefines the great canon of American poetry from its
origins in the 17th century right up to the present. It is a must-have
anthology for anyone interested in American literature and a book that
is sure to be consulted, debated, and treasured for years to come.
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