A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry

by Stephen Fredman (Editor)

This Concise Companion gives readers a rich sense of how the poetry produced in the United States during the twentieth century is connected to the country’s intellectual life more broadly.

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2005

Reviews

[Joe Amato]

I'm always on the lookout for a book that might serve as a primer for understanding the various currents of 20th-century US poetry, not least b/c I teach courses in same (when they let me…), but also b/c, as a poet myself, I'm hoping to develop a better sense of context and history. What sets this book apart, according to its editor, is that it provides "a view of the entire century's poetry and its concerns." It doesn't, that is, separate out things into (for instance) modernism and postmodernism, and it doesn't sacrifice the raw for the cooked, or vice versa. So we're presumably not to be treated to the sort of oppositional polemic one finds in books that seek to position alternative poetries against more conventional, mainstream writing, and by and large, the book succeeds on this count. Several of the chapters are succinct gems, and at least one chapter, Alan Filreis's "Modern Poetry and Anticommunism," threw open a few doors for me that probably should have been thrown open years ago.

There are a few problems, following from the obvious strengths of the collection. First, while many of the chapters detail the terms of an oppositional poetics (US vs. British, queer vs. heteronormative, African-American vs. white orthodoxy), a quick look at the index will show that the heaviest citations go to the Pound-Williams-Stein tribes, and this suggests that perhaps a greater underlying opposition is at work that simply can't be itemized away. Also, while overlapping can be a good thing, as the editor suggests, by providing different contextual readings, I found myself wishing at times that each chapter author had read the other chapters prior to galleys. Then too, despite the attempt to situate US poetries amid global ebbs and flows (particularly in A. Robert Lee's gnarly "Home and Away: US Poetries of Immigration and Migrancy"), there seems to be something of a missed opportunity in not underscoring the French influence on early homegrown (if in some cases expat) modernism. And finally, while Michael Davidson's "Philosophy and Theory in US Modern Poetry" attempts in its final pages to nod toward popular culture, this really deserves its own chapter. What distinguishes US public reception of poetry over the past hundred years surely has as much to do with the advent of cinema, TV, popular music, and (today) the Web as with poetry itself.

A fine collection, at any rate, that would certainly prove useful in a grad seminar in poetry and poetics.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 3 out of 5]

With chapters examining various aspects of twentieth-century poetry, the book attempts to give a comprehensive overview of various trends in the poetry of the 1900s. The chapters are designed to be easy to read, and for the most part they are. Unfortunately, a number of major American poets of the century are left out (Galway Kinnell, anyone?), and there's an oversimplification in terms of the poet in the academy, but for its comprehensive nature, this book could be foundational for anyone wanting to know about this time period in American literature.