Strangeness and surprise, endorsed by academic approval, are Lehman’s basic criteria of choice here. Realizing Americas multiplicity of taste and culture, he prefers to call the corpus ‘American poetries’ (p. viii) instead of just ‘American poetry’, and consequently offers a much wider canon than before. The first Oxford Anthology of American Verse edited by Bliss Carmen (1927) contained only 424 poems by 174 poets. F.O. Matthiessen’s edition of 1950 reduced the choice to 57 poets only, on the principle of ‘Fewer poets with more space for each’. Equally exacting in his choice, Richard Ellman’s edition (1976) listed 78 poets, but he claimed in his introduction full identity and adulthood for the American muse, no more an alter-ego of its trans-Atlantic sibling: ‘American poetry, monce an offshoot, now appears to be a parent stem’ (p. xv). Lehman’s superb anthology distincly excels its predecessors in scope, variety of form and number of poets.
February 2007, volume 31, No 2