American poetry

This anthology of contemporary American poetry and of its important precursors is unusual in several respects. It is a slender volume, but care has been taken to provide a coherent sample of the major tendencies in recent poetry. But the principal novelty of this book lies in its extraordinary richness of annotation. The editors have gone to great lengths to help the reader with the difficulties (cultural and stylistic) of these poems. And they have provided, in the critical introduction, a context for the development of contemporary poetry out of the great traditions of nineteenth-century literature and Modernism. The editors believe that advanced students as well as beginners may profit from this detailed and searching examination of important and delightful poems. New German translations of all poems can be found in an appendix.