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Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology

Paul Hoover (Goodreads Author) (Editor),

Ed Paschke (Illustrator),

Chris Welch (Designed by),

Amiri Baraka (Contributor),

Charles Bernstein (Contributor),

Bruce Andrews (Contributor),

Frank O'Hara (Contributor),

John Ashbery (Contributor),

more…

4.10 · Rating details · 622 ratings · 23 reviews

Postmodern American Poetry provides a deep and wide selection-411 poems by 103 poets-of the major poets and movements of the late twentieth century. Included are the leading Beat and New York School poets, the Projectivists, and "Deep Image" poets. Included, too, is the rich array of poetry written since 1975-language and performance poetry, the work of African American, H ...more

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Paperback, 744 pages

Published May 17th 1994 by W. W. Norton Company (first published April 17th 1994)

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Feb 01, 2022 Richard S rated it liked it

Shelves: poetry

The introduction by Paul Hoover is quite excellent at explaining Postmodern American Poetry and the various different schools, however the book really fails to impress with the quality of the selections. Other than maybe Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery, there's a lot of bad poetry in this volume that is considered "important" I suppose but failed to stir the least bit of interest in me. As a poet I look for a lot of things and the poetry that I like varies considerably, but pure form without con ...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Ann rated it liked it · review of another edition

I won't go so far as to say that I wish Paul Hoover could take back the second edition to his seminal first edition of Postmodern American Poetry, because there are many treasures to be found in this book for those who care to look, but I am glad that the first edition is still in print.

The first thing I did when I picked this book up at my library was to check that some of my favorite poems were still included and I pored over the list of poets to see who had been added.

I am pleased to say that I won't go so far as to say that I wish Paul Hoover could take back the second edition to his seminal first edition of Postmodern American Poetry, because there are many treasures to be found in this book for those who care to look, but I am glad that the first edition is still in print.

The first thing I did when I picked this book up at my library was to check that some of my favorite poems were still included and I pored over the list of poets to see who had been added.

I am pleased to say that most of my favorites from the first edition are still intact--with a few notable exceptions. I loved the excerpt from John Ashbery's Flow Chart that Hoover included in the first edition. I do understand and respect that Hoover wanted to update the Ashbery selection to include his most recent volumes. And, thank goodness, the heart-wrenching "How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher..." is still included.

As far as the new poets that were added, I'm a bit at a loss. Good to see G.C. Waldrep, but why no Mary Jo Bang? In his well-written introduction, Hoover explains that these contemporary poets are not so much postmodernists (how could they be?) but postlanguage poets. Postlanguage poets Hoover divides into three three distinct schools: Newlipo, conceptual poetry and cyberpoetry. This immediately made me wonder why Hoover did not produce a Postlanguage anthology instead of sticking new, untested poets into a second edition of Postmodern. Hoover acknowledges American Hybrid, the 2009 anthology edited by poets David St. John and Cole Swensen. That anthology proposed (correctly, I think) that the long-acknowledged "fundamental division" between experimental and traditional is disappearing in American poetry in favor of hybrid approaches that blend trends from accessible lyricism to linguistic exploration. Hoover admires this approach, but he doesn't accept it. With all due respect, Hoover's insistence of the avant-garde as something outside the ordinary seems a bit like a dreamer fighting windmills.

Hoover does some things right, like acknowledging how Fanny Howe and Rae Armantrout have--finally, in their long careers--become role models for the new generation. A highly positive development!

The book still packs immense power in the first half where we see the brazen, brilliant, still revolutionary poets who wrote in the shadows of the great Modernists (T.S. Eliot, et al.), many of whom became legends themselves--Ginsberg, Snyder, O'Hara, Creeley, Levertov, Baraka.

What a delicious difference from "The Waste Land" Frank O'Hara's "Ave Maria" must have been. The latter poem begins:

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images

...more

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Feb 23, 2012 Rodney rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry

We owe a debt to Paul Hoover for whatever punishing politics he went through to get this past Norton, then survive in the Balkans of small press poetry. I remember the jolt I first felt to see poets here that I’d never have imagined Nortonized: Joe Ceravolo, Hannah Weiner, John Godfrey, Barbara Guest, Bernadette Mayer, Ray DiPalma, Kathleen Fraser, Kenward Elmslie, Diane Wakoski, John Weiners, Diane Di Prima, and Amiri Baraka, to name a very few.

With word of a new edition under weigh though, Ho ...more

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Dec 27, 2021 Alialiarya rated it liked it

Shelves: before

علی قنبری کتاب را به فارسی ترجمه کرده است. ترجمه در بعضی اشعار بسیار بد است اما در مجموع کتاب جامع و خوبی بود. با بسیاری از شعرای جدید آشنا شدم

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Jul 30, 2011 Joseph Dunn rated it it was amazing

The most important collection of poems I own. I bought this just as I was turning on to poetry, and I felt like every poet inspired me in different ways. The editor did an excellent job showcasing the best poems of each poet. And what I appreciated about it most is the detailed history of American poetry after WWII. It gave me the foundation of my knowledge of the influential schools at work---mainly the Beat poets, the New York School poets, and the Black Mountain poets. For me, this anthology ...more

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Mar 01, 2008 Tentatively, Convenience rated it really liked it

Shelves: poetry

How long did it take me to read this?! Uh, let's see, there was that friendly brontosaurus that flipped the pages for me after the T-Rex injured my hand (close call) - it's been awhile. 106 poets w/ a few poems from each, an ending section of "poetics" essays.. & I'm going to try to write a capsule review?! Fool.

I've never read an entire Norton Anthology before (that I recall). I mainly associate them w/ being a type of massive 'definitiveness' that's acceptable to academia. The Norton Poetry A ...more

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Mar 06, 2014 Jee Koh rated it liked it · review of another edition

I've been ploughing through the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, more out of a sense of obligation than anything. I am surprised, however, by the amount of pleasure I received. Sure, there were many things that I would not care to read again, but the poets that I would sue to know better were not a few.

I still think Charles Olson is over-rated. John Cage I read with anthropological interest rather than aesthetic delight. Robert Duncan's mysticism is too hand-wavy for me; I am more I've been ploughing through the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, more out of a sense of obligation than anything. I am surprised, however, by the amount of pleasure I received. Sure, there were many things that I would not care to read again, but the poets that I would sue to know better were not a few.

I still think Charles Olson is over-rated. John Cage I read with anthropological interest rather than aesthetic delight. Robert Duncan's mysticism is too hand-wavy for me; I am more for Denise Levertov's "ecstatic Protestantism," as editor Paul Hoover puts it. "Illustrious Ancestors" and "Where Is the Angel?" bear re-reading. I am also drawn to Barbara Guest's lyricism. Her "Red Lilies" begins so practically: "Someone has remembered to dry the dishes;/they have taken the accident out of the stove," and ends with magical flight: "The paper folded like a napkin/other wings flew into the stone." Robert Creeley I find thin, despite of his musicality.

The New York School has weathered very well. They are fun to read. James Schuyler's "The Crystal Lithium" is a beautiful and convincing nature poem. "Letter to a Friend: Who Is Nancy Daum?" is terrific, as is "Korean Mums." Kenneth Koch is sharp and funny. Jack Spicer I find pretentious, but I did enjoy his re-writes of the tales of Arthur's knights, Gawain and Percival. Frank O'Hara is a joy. John Ashbery I don't get most of the time. He gives me the feeling that I have been had.

Larry Eigner's poetry is very spare, Japanese. He wrote what he observed from his wheelchair. Ed Dorn's "On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck" is very moving. Gregory Corso is a wild thing; witness "Last Night I Borrowed a Car." I have always liked Gary Snyder's "Riprap," and like here his homespun wisdom in "Hay for the Horses," "The Bath" and "Axe Handles." Amiri Baraka, who died this year, is all ideas.

I enjoyed Susan Howe's This That but the poems in this anthology, not as much. The extracts from Lyn Hejinian's My Life drift pleasantly but do not seize nor excite. Nothing to hold the attention from Joan Retallack to Wanda Coleman. Ron Silliman cannot forget that he is a critic even in his poetry. I got more out of re-reading Mei-mei Berssenbrugge than the first time.

The Language poets bore me to tears.

Bin Ramke's long poem "The Ruined World" is compelling. I'd like to read more of his work. I don't like Eileen Myle's way of breaking lines into one or two words. I enjoyed John Yau's cinematic poems, and was tickled to read his poem about Singlish called "ing Grish." Myung Mi Kim's poetry does nothing for me, does nothing to me, whereas Mark McMorris' does. I like the tone of intimacy in his Letters to Michael. Yes, he does talk about grammar and the torque of syntax, but his poems are one person speaking (or writing) or another: "The wound cannot close; language is a formal exit/is what exits from the wound it documents."

Of Kenneth Goldsmith and conceptual poetry, let me quote one avant-gardist against another. Drew Gardner, one of the "founders" of Flarf: "Conceptualism repeats gestures that were vetted and digested forty years ago in the art world and displays them in the poetry world virtually unchanged: it is a remake. Poetry is too out of it to notice. And thus Conceptualism hits an intellectual pitch. The intellectual pitch, it could be noted, of the art history professor" (in "Why Flarf Is Better Than Conceptualism").

I like what Elizabeth Willis wrote in her essay "The Arena in the Garden: Some Thoughts on the Late Lyric": "The language of progress tyrannizes poetry. . . . What's new is obsolete within seconds." Her poem "The Witch" is sexy, challenging and self-aware, permanent qualities of lyrical poetry. I hope she outlasts the noisy K. Silem Mohammad. Linh Dinh is another poet who turns his imagination to critical use. "Continuous Bullets Over Flattened Earth" is terrific, as are "Vocab Lab" and "Body Eats." They may sound didactic outwardly, but their inner voice is discovery.

And I certainly want to read more Eleni Sikelianos.

Christian Bök is one ingenious dude. Drew Gardner's Flarf poetry is good for a laugh, which is more than you can say for most of the poets in this anthology. "Chicks Dig War" is clever pastiche.

The Black Mountain poets have their Black Mountain college. The Language poets have their University of California, Berkeley and their SUNY-Buffalo. There is a coterie formed of the alumni of Brown University too. Now, every avant-garde must develop from a coterie, if only for mutual support and encouragement. But I prefer the coteries that are not based around institutions like universities and do not transmit their doctrines in a classroom, but are rather informal networks of friendships. Whether they are the New York School or the Flarf group, a ridiculous joie de vivre survives in their verse. ...more

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Aug 07, 2013 jcg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I found this volume a great adventure, introducing me to a number of poets I wasn't familiar with. I think the book does a good job of showing what is out there without overemphasizing a particular voice or poetic. Any anthology can be criticized for who is excluded; an anthology is only an introduction, it's an invitation to follow the poets in the book to discover the work of other, equally important, writers who weren't included but who share a similar poetic vision. It's not a closed volume, ...more

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Apr 15, 2015 Jennifer Nelson rated it liked it

Shelves: poetry

I found this a little difficult to rate, as I really liked some of the selected works, while absolutely hating others. So went with the 3 stars.

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Mar 02, 2021 Daniel Klawitter rated it it was ok

This is both an interesting and a frustrating book...a good anthology for giving the average reader a comprehensive understanding of the bewildering proliferation and decay of poetry in its “postmodern” clothing. In many respects, nothing dates itself quicker and becomes more boring than the so-called avant garde in poetry, especially once the novelty wears off…and for me it wears off very quickly. Just a mere handful of poems by the high modernists T.S. Eliot or e.e. cummings are better than ma ...more

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May 26, 2017 Hours rated it really liked it

Jack spicer - jc

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Apr 21, 2013 Richard Magahiz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: people interested in experimental poetry

Shelves: poetry, anthology, read-in-2013

I haven't read an entire Norton Anthology before but I thought I'd do just that. The 'Postmodern' in this anthology's title is still defining itself in reaction to poetry written in the earlier part of the twentieth century and in reaction to the different movements within itself - Black Mountain poetics, conceptualism, language poetry, flarf. Because of this, a reader who isn't an insider must necessarily spend a lot of time in bafflement at exactly what is going on within a poem, sometimes a c ...more

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Feb 09, 2008 Emma rated it liked it

Good anthology but it didn't have a lot of what I would call the best poems by included authors. The selection amounts were also a bit too widely varied. Good for readers to new this area of poetry, but if you have specific opinions about authors, the selections might leave you cold. ...more

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Apr 26, 2014 Book Child added it · review of another edition

valuable coffee table flicker-througher

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Mar 19, 2016 Madison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Yes, it's a Norton Anthology, but still (for me) an indispensable resource in understanding the recent history and breadth of avant garde poets informing the possible in contemporary American poetry. ...more

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Apr 25, 2017 Kate Moore rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the book that introduced me to Paul Blackburn. Even if Brooklyn Narcissus was the only worthwhile poem in the entire anthology, it would be worth it! Luckily, the rest is pretty golden too.

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Feb 12, 2019 Peter Crofts rated it it was amazing

A couple of decades behind the times, but an essential read if you want to look at post WWII American poetry. The introduction is top shelf as well.

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Jun 01, 2012 Jennifer rated it liked it

Shelves: poetry

I've had this book since my senior year of college. I've never stopped reading from it. It's too massive to finish for one! ...more

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Aug 10, 2007 Mendi marked it as to-read

I bought this recently in an airport bookstore. Can't wait to dig in. ...more

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Mar 06, 2015 Mills College Library added it · review of another edition

811.5408 P8584 2013

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Aug 18, 2007 Eli rated it it was amazing

Excellent introduction to contemporary poetry. Contains selections from a lot of big names (Ginsburg,Bukowski, Ashberry) as well a lot of less known poets.

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