American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393333752 ISBN 13: 9780393333756

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

This spirited anthology of contemporary American poetry focuses on the new poem--the hybrid--a synthesis of traditional and experimental styles.

As Cole Swensen argues in the introduction to this comprehensive new anthology, the long-acknowledged "fundamental division" between experimental and traditional is disappearing in American poetry in favor of hybrid approaches that blend trends from accessible lyricism to linguistic exploration. The focus in American Hybrid is on the blend; the more than seventy poets featured here--including Jorie Graham, Albert Goldbarth, and Lyn Hejinian--have found new and often unique ways to reconfigure the innumerable and sometimes conflicting voices of the past thirty years. The editors have crafted short introductory essays on each of the poets in the anthology, providing biographical backgrounds and positioning them within the current of contemporary poetry. This new anthology is essential reading for those who care about the present moment--and the future--of American verse. 3

About this title

About the Author:

David St. John has published nine collections of poetry, including The Face. He teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Venice, California.

A Guggenheim fellow and professor at Brown University, COLE SWENSEN is the author of more than ten poetry collections and many translations of works from the French.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. In their introductions, editors Swensen and St. John, both accomplished and forward-thinking poets, outline the contention that spurred this anthology: for a long time, poetry has been divided, or has divided itself, into two basic camps, traditional and experimental. In contemporary American poetry, the editors argue, and the poets collected here demonstrate, these distinctions no longer make sense, as poets now draw equally from both traditions, often in the same poem. Hence these generous selections from 73 poets who seek to blend, in varying degrees, the straightforward clarity and formal rigor of the long poetic tradition with the disjunction, self-consciousness and obscurity of experimental poetics. Some names will be familiar to the casual reader of American poetry (John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass); some are well known in poetry circles (Brenda Hillman, D.A. Powell, Donald Revell); and others are totally new to this kind of anthology, such as the amazing and subtle Martha Ronk (When it is raining it is raining for all time then it isn't) and Bin Ramke, a master of the commingling of old and new. For serious readers of poetry, novices looking for a way in to what's new, and, perhaps especially, for poetry professors, this is a must-have book. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0393333752
• ISBN 13: 9780393333756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560
• Editor: St. John David