A recent review of Rita Dove's new anthology of 20th century American Poetry, for Penguin, by Helen Vendler, really takes exception to a multicultural Keith Tuma-style approach to the anthology. Vendler is clearly on the side of a canon of well-made poems, versus Dove's attention to identity poetry, and poetry of the often marginalised. Both sides can become entrenched. I welcome diversity, but Vendler, in this case, seems to have a firmer grasp of history and quality. Surely it must be wrong in a Kantian sense to include twice as much of Melvin B. Tolson as Wallace Stevens? Stevens is one of the pillars of American modernist and post-modernist poetics. Tolson is an important outrider of the Harlem Renaissance, and a key African-American modernist. If this decision gets more Tolson readers, that's fine. But such large-scale anthologies do also need to keep some sense of balance. I look forward to reading it myself.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
Comments
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/dec/22/defending-anthology/
Page counts do not just reflect importance, they also reflect the lengths at which the poet works best -- Tolson wrote longer poems and so it is not really that shocking that he takes up more room.
Stevens is so overrated these days that giving him less room is all to the good, though I would say teh same thing about teh writings of Rita Dove.