Out of This World An Anthology

The three parts of Waldman's ( Helping the Dreamer ) anthology of Poetry Project writings--each representing a generation of authors--resemble a triptych portraying popular culture's metamorphoses. Part One focuses on the Project's precursors of the late 1950s and early '60s: Black Mountain innovators like Fielding Dawson--who contributes the tiny gem of an essay "On Writing Novels"--and New York School writers like Frank O'Hara. Part Two begins in 1966 with the Project proper. Ed Sanders's poem recalls the "Yiddish-speaking socialists of the Lower East Side" whose Old Left politics the Project inherited. Although Waldman errs on the side of inclusivity, the writing she culls from the latest generation is nearly all galvanizing and diverse. With superb insight and precision, Mary Caponegro describes a village's collective sigh over the death of a member as a "clearing of the throat to open the way for gossip." Maggie Dubris's "Welcome to WillieWorld" seems a surreal depiction of urban life, but the contributors' notes clarify that it is more a transcription of Dubris's actual experience as a New York City paramedic, a piece very much out of this world.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Poetry Project at St. Mark's has been the de facto headquarters of the East Coast avant-garde for 25 years. Largely composed of work from the project's magazine The World , this anthology "celebrates the 'outrider' tradition," including selections from progenitors like Creeley, Corso, and Guest through unclassifiables such as Alice Notley and John Yau, to today's best-known language poets. Helen Adam's strict ballads are within page-flipping distance of Quincy Troupe's verbal jazz riffs and John Giorno's echoic litanies. What's Donald Hall doing here? Perhaps he was invited by Lou Reed. This book is huge and acceptably weird proof that there's more going on in poetry than the academy tells us.
- Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.