American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders

by Eliot Weinberger (Editor)

"American Poetry Since 1950" is a new map of the territory, an array of known and unknown contemporary classics. It is full of strange texts and startling procedures, histories and natural histories, high lyricism and extended meditations-- extraordinary works that challenge our notions of what a poem ought to be. Since Whitman and Dickinson, most of the major poetry in the United States has been written against the literary establishments and prevailing canons of taste, and often far from the cultural centers. This is the first anthology in many years to gather the work from this continuing tradition of innovators and outsiders, presenting poets and poems that are still excluded from the academic collections. Opening with the last poems of the Modernist masters Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and H.D., the book follows through four generations of writers who have been the primary figures of the new poetries and poetics since 1950. With a historical afterword, complete bibliographies, and generous selections from each of the thirty-five poets, this anthology is the only available introduction to the poets connected with such groups and movements as the Objectivists, the Beats, Black Mountain, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance, and ethnopoetics.

Genres: Poetry

452 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

About the author

Eliot Weinberger is a contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. His work regularly appears in translation and has been published in some thirty languages.
Weinberger first gained recognition for his translations of the Nobel Prize winning writer and poet Octavio Paz. His many translations of the work of Paz include the Collected Poems 1957-1987, In Light of India, and Sunstone. Among Weinberger's other translations are Vicente Huidobro's Altazor, Xavier Villaurrutia's Nostalgia for Death, and Jorge Luis Borges' Seven Nights. His edition of Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Reviews

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very powerful anthology of postwar American poetry. I was inspired and driven to writers I hadn't read very much before. I will definitely be following up with some more Kenneth Rexroth, for example.

All in all this is a classic anthology and still relevant today.

[Derek H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic selection of greatest hits and "lesser-known" work of many fantastic poets. Not bad, so far as anthologies go--and Weinberger (a fantastic writer in his own right) does a brave job presenting his ideology.