Poetry of this Age [antikvár]

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION Seven years later, I find that my judgments and valuations are on the whole unchanged. I have however added references to poets whom I had not sufficiently read and appreciated in 1959, or who have written their best work since. Brecht and Mandelshtam come under the first heading, Lowell and Voznesensky under the second. I have also found that certain of the older poets require more attention than I originally gave them, and a few seem less important than they did before. The book is consequently a little longer now, and approximately seventy names occur. But I have taken care not to include a cursory account of too many, and would still observe that more good poetry is being written, and in more countries, than I have acknowledged here. J.M.C December ig6s PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION As an introduction to modern poetry this book takes plenty of risks. In the first place its choice of poets is of course personal. I have chosen about four dozen as the greatest number that a small book like this can treat at all adequately. This of course does not mean that these seem to me the only significant poets of the last fifty years. They are, however, in my opinion the most important; and if I have left out