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.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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.