The New Pocket Anthology Of American Verse [antikvár]

Preface This collection, although it covers a period of three centuries, has virtually three-quarters of its space devoted to the poetry of the Tv/entieth. Further, more poets of the Twentieth Century than of the entire preceding time are represented. For, in tlie last fifty-five years, American poetry has become not only more American but mature, able, abundant and permanently established in world literature. While it expands and continues the tradition of English poetry, it is no longer the provincial simulacrum of what was made in the British Isles as, for the preceding two hundred and fifty years, it tended, with few exceptions, to be. Most anthologies of American poetry have been compiled more from the historical point of view than from absolute vision of poetic value. In textbooks of American literature many poets have been given inflated importance for the simple reason that, in their periods, not much of value was produced, and the poets, for lack of rivals of immortal stature, dominated their contemporary scenes. Thus Longfellow, Lowell, Bryant, Whittier, etc. rather sparingly represented in this volume, have become entrenched in the schools although their work can stand scarcely any comparison with the immortal poetry of the English tongue, at no matter what level the comparison might be made. This cultural near-tragedy is the more to be regretted since the work of such men is not even American in spirit, weakly imitative as it is of English models, Elizabethan, Victorian, etc. Even when seemingly American because of the use of American place-names, the spirit and technique of such a poet as Longfellow remained that of second-rate English writers. Hiawatha, for example, expresses none of the actual Indian personality, outlook or culture in spite of its superficial use of Indian names. This criticism, severe as it may sound, is by no means a disparagement of American poetry; it is a happy wonder that even in the youth of our nation, in spite of the fact that with the English tongue as our medium and English cultme as our cultural nutriment, we should so quickly have produced such definitely American poets as Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. But although we have had these important figures before 1900 it cannot be said that we had a full and definite volume of American poetry. Only when the many minor poets make substantial contributions to a literature and that literature has an expansive and indigenous audience can we make the claim of a homogeneous and important culture. 15