The 20Th Century in Poetry

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This ground-breaking anthology presents in chronological order over 400 poems written in the twentieth century. The authors, both published poets themselves, give an overview of each period of history and then select no more than 4 poems for each year. Notes to the poems place each one in its historical context and trace the century's poetic development, while concise biographies for each poet complete the anthology.By organizing the poems in chronological order, readers will see poets in a new light. Here A.E. Houseman, for example, rubs shoulders with T.S. Eliot, showing that traditional forms can hold their own against the modernist orthodoxy. Here are poets rescued from oblivion, such as the suffragette who wrote a compelling poem about her mistreatment in Holloway Prison in 1912 or the medical offer who went into Belsen with the British troops producing an eye-witness poem of lasting power. All the major events of the twentieth century are reflected in the choice of poems within these pages.This richly rewarding collection makes invaluable reading for poetry lovers all over the world.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Hulse and Rae present an anthology of 20th-century verse that seeks to place poetry in its historical context and to show how that poetry engages history in the making. In this way, the anthology is a refreshing collection, one that reminds readers that poets do not write in a vacuum. The editors divide the poems chronologically by historical periods, which are defined by, for example, the world wars and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Aside from its novel structure, the book offers the usual suspects, poets who have long dominated anthologies: Eliot, Pound, Auden, Yeats, Larkin, Plath, et al. Since the editors are both from the UK, the selections favor that side of the Atlantic, but there is a fair representation of US writers and a smattering of Australian (notably Les Murray) and Caribbean (Derek Walcott) authors. The book offers only sparse annotations on the poems, and thus given the notorious difficulty of 20th-century verse, it is a better reading than pedagogical resource. Summing Up: Recommendation. Undergraduates and general readers. J. W. Moffett Northern Kentucky University

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Poetry has always been an artistic form of history, commentary, and analysis, though few anthologies emphasize this. Now British poets Hulse and Rae take a fresh and encompassing approach to the symbiosis between history and poetry in this prodigious harvest of more than 400 twentieth-century poems by English-language poets from Britain, the U.S., Canada, India, Africa, Australia, and beyond. The commanding, crooning, stabbing, and dancing poems are arranged chronologically by the events, discoveries, and zeitgeists they grapple with. And even the most intimate poems cast light on momentous concerns in this mighty assemblage of distinctive voices seeking the truths and pondering the mysteries of the cyclonic twentieth century's defining wars, genocides, prejudice, corruption, family life, and scientific leaps. Hulse and Rae are just as intrigued by the vital diversity of poetic styles that existed side by side as they are with how individual poets viewed the world. Incisive historic overviews and brief biographies organize poems by such anchoring giants as Yeats, Auden, Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Derek Walcott, and Elizabeth Bishop, among many other arresting writers. An entire universe of poetry lives here, making this a perfect library book, especially for smaller collections.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist