The Voice That is Great Within Us:American Poetry of the Twentieth Century

by Hayden Carruth

This famous anthology includes the works of more than 130 major American poets of the modern period--Robert Frost, Paul Goodman, Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks among them--along with short biographies of each.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Fiction, American, Classics

722 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 1981

About the author

Hayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic, and anthologist known for his distinctive voice, blending formal precision with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. Over a career spanning more than sixty years, he published over thirty books of poetry, as well as essays, literary criticism, and anthologies. His work often explored themes of rural life, hardship, mental illness, and social justice, reflecting both his personal struggles and his political convictions.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Carruth studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago. His early career included serving as editor-in-chief of Poetry and as an advisory editor of The Hudson Review for two decades. He later became poetry editor at Harper’s Magazine and held teaching positions at Johnson State College, the University of Vermont, and Syracuse University, where he influenced a new generation of poets.
Carruth received numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Collected Shorter Poems (1992) and the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey (1996). His later works, such as Doctor Jazz and Last Poems, further cemented his reputation as a major voice in American poetry. His influential anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us remains a landmark collection of American verse.

Reviews

[John Sundman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased a copy of this book before leaving for Senegal as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1974. For two years I lived in a mud hut in a small village on the edge of the Sahara, far from running water, electricity, or anybody who spoke english.

The Voice That Is Great Within Us kept me excellent company through those often lonely times. I wrote in the margins and scribbled notes on the inside margins. I don't have my copy in front of me, so I can't cite with confidence any particular poem or biography, but I recall discovering poems by Rexroth, Nemerov, Wilbur, Moore, Roethke, Frost, so many others, that I could read again and again, and I would find my homesick agitation becoming a kind of serenity.

This isn't much of a review, I guess. It's more about the feelings I associate with it in my very particular circumstances than it is about the book itself. I just remember it being really great & thought I would share that with you.

[Trina · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could just as well have been called "The Ego That is Great Within Us", not just because Carruth includes himself. The breastbeating of rival male poets is enough to turn anyone off to 20th c. American poetry.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this poetry anthology back in high school, but despite remember how much I'd loved it, couldn't remember what it was called. Finding it in storage was a wonderful surprise, and it was just as enjoyable as I remembered.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading this years ago and go back to it at times, just picking poems at random to read. Thoroughly recommend this book, or at least reading Vachel Lindsay's "The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly"; Sara Teasdale's "I Am Not Yours", "What Do I Care", & "Moonlight"; or Edward Dorn's "The Biggest Killing". Those were introduced to me by this book and are the ones I find myself re-reading the most often. Did I mention I'm a Science Fiction/Fantasy reader mostly? This book is a great anthology of twentieth century American poetry with works from greats like Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, E.E. Cummings, and many, many more. My copy clocks in at 722 pages, so it does seem a little daunting at first; But, it is poetry so it's extremely easy to find a stopping point.

[Starla Huchton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is what I would consider a "gateway drug". I purchased this in high school as a sort of primer for myself, to increase my knowledge base of American poetry. Through this book I discovered my favorite poet of all time, Sara Teasdale. I also learned that Robert Frost was not always amazingly verbose (look up a little poem titled "In Neglect" <3 ) and there's more to female poets than Sylvia Plath. It's perfect for what it sets out to be: a sampler of some of the most powerful voices in American poetry. This book will forever remain on my shelf.

[Michael Arnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if I have enough authority to say this is the "best" anthology of 20th century American poetry (The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove is also phenomenal) but it is hard to beat. For the price and size it is a great sampling of a turbulent century of American poetry. The fact that it was edited by Hayden Carruth, one of the best and most under-appreciated American poets of the last 50 years makes it that much more wonderful.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dug it. Completely. Devoured this bad boy for a month or two straight. Just started reading cover to cover. While it leaves out some good poets, I discovered how much I liked Robert Frost, and i hated that prick for years until that point. Gotta love a book which can turn you into a better writer off osmosis.

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

750pp of poems picked by Hayden Carruth - marvelous $2 find at one of my fave used bookstores. quality gets a little spotty in the final third, but this is generally a substantial and great if idiosyncratic anthology of American poetry 1900-1970ish.

[Rusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quote from Hayden Carruth describes it best: "What an achievement, these sixty years of poetry! Americans regard the rest of our recent history, the score of things done well and done ill, this much at least we have done supeerlatively."

[Hank Hoeft · Rating 4 out of 5]

A confession: I gave The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century a four-star rating as an act of blind faith. That is, I am aware that Hayden Carruth was a respected poet and critic, and his large (770 pages) anthology is a respected collection of American poetry that has weathered the test of time. But having said all that, I also (full disclosure here) must admit that a large percentage—indeed, a sizable majority—of the poems included still remain opaque to me.

This is an uncomfortable admission, as I was a high school English teacher for 36 years, and I absolutely loved teaching poetry to my students. And when I would present a new poem to my class, and some students would complain that the poem was “stupid” because they didn’t get it, I would always tell them this: None of the poems we examined, both the ones in the literature textbook and the ones that I would bring in on my own, were written to vex and confuse high school students, nor were they written specifically for inclusion in a textbook. Rather, all had passed the test of time, and the test of commercial success (I also used a lot of song-lyrics-as-poetry in my lessons). So if the student didn’t get anything out of the poem, then either (A) there wasn’t anything to get (that is, the student’s assessment of the poem as “stupid” was correct), or (B) there was something of value in the poem, and the student just needed to work harder at it to mine the gold or silver that was there. I would then conclude by telling my students that since all the poems we read and listened to were poems that society by general consensus had deemed worthwhile, then it was probably more productive to assume there was something in the poem to “get,” rather than assume the poem was empty and meaningless.

What’s more, I reassured my students that many—most, actually—of the poems we read in class were poems which I myself did not “get” the first time I read them. Clarity and understanding generally came after repeated readings and pondering. I told them if they understood everything about a poem after just one reading, then it wasn’t very deep – it was the equivalent of a Hallmark greeting card.

Having said all that, I now come back to The Voice That Is Great Within Us, and I am chagrined to confess that I do not understand most of the poems. For me, too many of them are like William Carlos William’s “A Red Wheelbarrow,” reprinted here in its entirety: “So much depends/ upon/ a red wheel/ barrow/ glazed with rain/ water/ beside the white/ chickens.” It sounds like a Zen koan. I began reading The Voice That Is Great Within Us way back on February 6, 2022, and it’s taken me this long to read the entire collection because (A) it’s 722 pages of poetry, and (B) I wanted to take my time because so many of the poems required a lot of thought. But for too many of the poems, chewing them slowly and carefully and taking my time to digest them just didn’t work. I don’t mean to sound immodest, but I know I have a fairly high I.Q. and fairly well-developed powers of literary analysis, so I found reading The Voice That Is Great Within Us largely a frustrating experience. But as I also prefer my visual art – paintings, sculpture, photography – to be more on the representational side than the abstract side, maybe that’s just how my brain works.

The bottom line is, The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century gets a four-star rating on the premise that the anthology’s reputation is deserved and I just don’t “get” many of the poems – i.e., the problem is with me and not with the poetry. I considered giving the book five stars, but I’m holding one star back just in case the Emperor really doesn’t have any clothes.

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent compendium of early to mid-twentieth century American poets. A great introduction.

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best anthology of modern American poetry I know of.

[Leroy Wow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection for getting your feet wet in American poetry.

[Ailin · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a slog to get through. I enjoyed some of the female poets in here, but really just a drag for the most part.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her comment on this volume, Adrienne Rich notes “the editorial care and devotion which has refused to plagiarize other anthologies….” That is, while this anthology of American verse includes work by twentieth century poets such as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, in most cases the poems in the book are not the ones you find in other anthologies (exceptions to this include the poems by e.e. cummings and those by Ezra Pound). At more than 700 pages long, this anthology also includes work by a good number of lesser-known poets.

Update: re-read a second time, March 9 -- April 27, 2015.

Acquired copy I am currently using Aug 28, 2006
P.T. Campbell Bookseller, London, Ontario

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually a trade paperback book of poetry put out by Bantam back in 1970 (reprinted in 1983). It contains 722 pages of 20th Century American poetry with the last page being the end of a poem. There are no poet bios or indexes or comments on the poems. This is a little book dense with poetry. The table of contents is over 10 pages. It covers from Robert Frost to Joel Sloman (whose first book came out in 1966). The number of poems representing each poet varies widely. Most of these poets were familiar to me but some of them weren’t. Even for the familiar poets, Carruth chose some less anthologized poems so I was reading new stuff by them. Due to its convenient size and inclusion of some poets I’d never seen elsewhere, such as Jean Garrigue, I’ll be keeping this book. It’s still available and still cheap. Thank you, Bantam. I wish more trade paperback publishers would venture into poetry.

[Gilbert Wesley Purdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was meant to be a more inclusive and edgier reply to the highly popular Oscar Williams anthologies and the Oxford Book of American Verse, a radical course change in its time. It is a glorious success in that regard. At the same time, its financial success inadvertently opened the gates to a flood of anthologies that has not yet abated. There are reputations in them thar hills. It is fair to say that this anthology captured an historical moment, however imperfectly. In cooler retrospect, together with the Williams anthologies and Oxford Anthology it completes a set of sorts that manages to anthologize American poetry until about 1970.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would normally give this book a five star rating for content. Excellent commentary on poets; excellent examples of their work; excellent selection for inclusion. My problem with the book was its poor print job. The typeface is very small and extremely hard to read. It is also printed cheaply...like a pulp paperback and parts of it actually looked smeared. Pay more money and get a better copy of this outstanding collection.

[Des Bladet · Rating 5 out of 5]

American poetry from 1910 to 1970 or so, lovingly anthologised. Immensely generous; packed with good poems and poets you didn't even know you didn't know. More than twice the usual number of suspects, and if you pick one at random it will be at least good and usually wonderful.

I would like a sequel covering 1970 to now, please.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a great many more poems here than I really enjoyed. That's not a comment on their quality, only my taste. Anyway, it's a good introduction to a lot of poets that I intend to investigate further.

[Scott Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

My introduction to 20th century poetry. Inexpensive, but uneven selections. Quite dated now, but this collection introduced me to Charles Reznikoff, Kenneth Rexroth, and Brother Antoninus, among others, so it has a special place in my heart.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a beat-up copy of this that I lugged around at the summer camp where I worked. It still remains my favorite poetry anthology.

[Jenn]

This one is going to take me forever but it's good so far. An anthology of American poetry selected by a poet, not an academic.

[Camilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

i adore poetry so, this book was just perfect for me. I read like a maniac, and, i still have it somewhere in my room.

[Jennifer Lumsden]

I pick up this book every few weeks and find something new that I love every time. So it's perpetually on my "currently-reading" shelf.

[Risa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century (Bantam Classics) by Hayden Carruth (1983)

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Put this in your briefcase, your desk , end table but always keep it at arms lenghth.

[Marie Ash-Evans]

Good collection of poetry written before 1970. 722 pages, if you enjoy poetry you should find some old favorites and maybe a few more to add to your list.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this for an undergrad class and have hung on to it since. Great anthology and I still pick it up now and then and flip through the beautiful poems.

[Mary Graves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great general book of poetry with many evenings of quiet reflection.

Actually always keep it by my bedside.