Whisperings an anthology of poetry
Should Tolson be denied representation because he writes long poems? As far as the selection of early Stevens goes, my original choices included several middle-period poems, but rights problems prohibited their final inclusion. Tolson is represented by two poems (actually, one poem and one section of a book-length poem) Stevens by six.
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Vendler has established herself as an authority on Wallace Stevens, and it is in that role that she asks her unsuspecting readers, with exasperation: “Did Dove feel that only these poems would be graspable by the audience she wishes to reach? Or is it that she admires Stevens less that she admires Melvin Tolson, who receives fourteen pages to Stevens’s six?” Ah, here we go, totting up pages of poetry rather than the poems themselves. Vendler lets her guard down when she laments, rather condescendingly, that I am a poet, not an essayist, “writing in a genre not own”-as if that alone disqualifies me from being capable of lucid prose as long as she, the master essayist, owns the genre lock, stock, and barrel.Ģ. Part of the problem with the phenomenon one could call poetry politics is the reluctance of many scholars to allow for choice without the selfish urge to denigrate beyond whatever doesn’t fit their own aesthetics literary history is rife with stories of critics cracking the whip over the heads of ducking artists, critics who in their hubris believe they should be the only ones permitted to render verdicts in the public courts of literature.īut as we know, every generation burrows into its own hard-earned defenses, and it is the prerogative of the young to challenge-yes, and shock-their elders.
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But The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry is not meant to be an in-depth scholarly study of pick-your-ism it is a gathering of poems its editor finds outstanding for a variety of reasons, and by no means all of them in adherence to my own aesthetic taste buds my intent was to offer many of the best poems bound into books between 19 and to lend a helping hand to those readers wishing to strike out on their own beyond this selection. Indeed, one of her own forays onto the anthology turf, The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1985), prompted a disgruntled reader to retort on : “The American Tree Becomes a Toothpick.” Conversely, when one considers the number of American poets (124) in The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry-which includes other Anglophone poets as well-or the number of poets who have received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book or the National Book Critics’ Circle awards, 175 doesn’t seem an unreasonable number for a century’s worth of poetry-that is, if you are a mere mortal not satiated by a steady diet of ambrosia.Īssuredly, many acclaimed poets are no match to Shakespeare-probably not a one, not even Walt Whitman. Vendler maintains, in all seriousness: “No century in the evolution of poetry in English ever had 175 poets worth reading.” Whoa! I suppose Vendler would rather I declare a Top Ten, or perhaps just five, as she herself did in her recent scholarly study Last Looks, Last Books.
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Let’s take a closer look at the most glaring of Helen Vendler’s broad assumptions:ġ. I have no desire to engage a critic in a debate on aesthetic preferences and consequent selection-to each her own-but I cannot let her get away with building her house of cards on falsehoods and innuendo. In her review of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, which I had the pleasure of editing, Helen Vendler seems to have allowed outrage to get the better of her, leading to a number of illogical assertions and haphazard conclusions.