Library of America: Read an interview with the editors of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century about the process of selecting poems for the anthology.

Read an interview with the editors of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century about the process of selecting poems for the anthology.

For more information about American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, volume one: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker, click here.

April 1, 2000

Can you describe the process of selecting the poems for the anthology? With so much to choose from, where does one begin?

Our premise was to create an anthology of modern American poetry which could serve as an almost encyclopedic guide to the range of work produced in the twentieth century. It was decided early on that two and even three volumes were not sufficient to cover the century in which poetic productiveness has expanded with each decade. The first two volumes, to be published April 2000, National Poetry Month, include poets born up to 1913. (Two further volumes will continue the story to century's end, although for obvious reasons the final volume, containing work from its final decades, will not be published until enough time has elapsed to permit a clearer perspective.)

The first step was to compile a list of poets who might be expected to figure in the anthology: a list of far more poets than could possibly be included. We began with the obvious names and, filled out the help of earlier anthologies and critical studies, the list was then sent to approximately 50 advisors—poets and scholars—for their suggestions positive and negative. The responses proved an invaluable resource, as many respondents offered detailed recommendations as to poets and poems worthy of inclusion. At this point, many names were added to the original list, and a few (by consensus) were deleted. The next step, which took several years, was to acquire copies of all or most of the work of the listed poets, and read them systematically.

Who was involved in the selection?

The entire editorial staff of The Library of America participated in one way or another in the process. Proposed selections were then submitted to an advisory board consisting of Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, and Marjorie Perloff for their detailed comments. Near the end of the selection process a meeting of the advisory board was held, which turned into a remarkably vigorous all-day discussion which in turn elicited further suggestions.

What guidelines were used in deciding what to include?

The premise was that these volumes would reflect not only our contemporary sense of the relative value of the poets included, but an awareness of how things looked at different points in time. The result would be to create for the reader something like the experience of living through those decades, reading the poems as they came out in magazines and books, being aware of debates and conflicts and stylistic shifts, the slowly gathering reputations and the meteoric events like, say, the publication of The Waste Land or the death of Hart Crane).

In trimming the initial list of poets to a reasonable size, we took into account above all the poetic interest of the work as perceived by everyone involved in the process. We also considered historical interest--whether in terms of the development of a genre or a style, the introduction of novel subject matter, or the emergence of poets outside the main literary centers- -but only if it was felt that the work retained the energy that makes work readable. We were not at all interested in offering examples of outmoded approaches or faded reputations merely for the sake of the record. A decision was made early on to include examples of song lyrics as indisputably contributing to the richness and sophistication of poetic language during this period.

Was it clear who and what should be included, or were there surprises along the way?

Certain names were obvious; it was understood that, in keeping with the practice of The Library of America, the major canonical figures and works would be included. In fact the first step of the process was to arrive at a list of such unavoidable poems—Stevens' "Sunday Morning," Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"—in order to gauge how much space they would take up. Happily, ample room remained for more unusual selections. There were many surprises: the religious poems of Anna Hempstead Branch; the cinquains of Adelaide Crapsey; Carl Sandburg's early work, much more varied than most anthologies indicate; the nowadays mostly overlooked poetry of once celebrated figures like Witter Bynner, Elinor Wylie, and John Peale Bishop; neglected lyric poets of great quality, like Abbie Huston Evans, Constance Carrier, Robert Francis, and Mary Barnard; the still underrated Kenneth Fearing; the poignant poetry of David Schubert, a tragic figure whose work prefigured the New York Poets.

What were your sources?

We drew on magazines, newspapers, political pamphlets, sheet music, transcriptions of recordings, as well as on books—both mainstream, Pulitizer Prize-winning volumes and small press books published anywhere from Portland, Oregon, to Paris. We looked closely at every major older anthology, including such influential volumes as Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin's The New Poetry, Alfred Kreymborg's Others annuals, Conrad Aiken's Modern American Poetry, and Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps' The Poetry of the Negro. In most cases we went back to the earliest book versions of poems, or, where no book version existed, to periodicals. Many of the poems here have not been previously anthologized, and quite a few have not been reprinted since their original publication.

Since anthologies usually cast a new light on their period or genre, how does this one help to redefine the era? What is the picture that emerges?

Twentieth-century American poetry registers a striking break with the past. The range of new styles and the addressing of new subject matter—from the teens to the 30s especially—distinguishes it from most of what came before. Merely from reading the biographical notes it's obvious that many different kinds of people were writing and publishing poetry, and in the process redefining what the function of poetry was. There is a pervasive radicalism, at once aesthetic, political, and personal, but it takes an astonishing variety of forms, from the populist religious fervor of Vachel Lindsay to the linguistic experiments of Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams, from the cosmopolitan sexual frankness of Edna St. Vincent Millay to the angry affirmation of African-American cultural tradition in Sterling A. Brown. By the 1940's, another trend becomes evident, toward that academic professionalization of poetry with which we are now thoroughly familiar. At every stage there is the sense of not one definition of poetry (or, for that matter, of America) but of many different, contesting definitions.

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James Baldwin

"We cannot understand this nation's evolution or ourselves today, until we pass through Baldwin's seminal writings and singular life." —Charles Johnson

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