One Man's Choice

...One of our two or three most distinguished critics of modern poetry, Rosenthal brings to his task a fine perception of what counts in that constantly burgeoning universe of poetry books, and in the little magazines with their perennial discoveries of new movements and schools and "promising talents...

...This audience is for the most part literate, and wants to be appraised of the key movements and major tendencies in modern verse...

...One may argue with Rosenthal's omission of a fine younger poet like Frederick Seidel, or of accomplished minor poets like Adrienne Rich and James Merrill...

...I speak in particular of selections from D.J...

...It is also attractively bound and printed, at once avoiding the dour solemnity of most academic anthologies and the blatant mass-market appeal of the collections one associates with Oscar Williams...

...These men are gifted observers of the American landscape...

...Here is where my earlier question about the intended audience of this anthology becomes essential, for the book is apparently directed toward a general audience...

...But despite the careful selection, there is the lingering impression of random choice: Often the reader finds himself whispering "he could have chosen my favorite instead of his" or "wouldn't this poet have been better served by this poem rather than that one...

...All of which leads one to ask, for whom are such anthologies intended...

...In other words, this anthology may send general readers to other sources, but it cannot really structure anyone's orientation to the poetry of our time...

...Considering the small number of really outstanding poems our best poets have been able to produce, this is no insignificant achievement...

...The only other revelations here are a few poems by lesser figures which promise, perhaps, more than we have thought...

...It is good, for example, to know that substantial contributions have been made by a group loosely known as the Sixties poets, associated with Robert Bly...

...They are not important to poets and to professional observers of the poetry scene, who inevitably keep up with the better work as it appears...

...If it were, we should all take seriously the eccentrically wrong-headed views of that brilliant iconoclast Ivor Winters, who commands universal respect though his judgments are universally snubbed and ignored...

...If Rosenthal were convinced that Nemerov is the better poet, or even the more significant poet given the vagaries of the current literary situation, one could understand...

...Reviewed by ROBERT BOYERS Editor, "Salmagundi" The late Randall Jarrell once wrote that "the typical anthologist is a sort of Gallup Poll with connections??often astonishing ones...

...He may be dogmatic if he chooses, in which case he may produce an anthology of limited though undeniable merit...

...Thus the good anthologist must believe that his own taste is a reliable index to excellence and importance, even while understanding how idiosyncratic his judgments are certain to appear to others...

...Nor is educated taste a guarantee of proper judgment...

...The one exception to this is the case of Anne Sexton, a brilliant poet who lamentably, has been ignored or casually dismissed as a servile imitator of Robert Lowell or some other "confessional" poet...

...I am not sure this anthology will help...

...Enright and the Irish poets, Austin Clarke and Thomas Kinsella...

...He loves good poetry and measures the efforts of new practitioners against the best work of modern masters like Yeats, Thomas and Williams (with whom he has made profound acquaintance...

...The very brief introduction is interesting...

...I suppose we all know from whose pen we expect any major poetry to come, and what the high points have been...

...While Lowell understandably has the largest representation, Rosenthal demonstrates similar admiration for Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell, Sylvia Plath, the brilliant British poet Ted Hughes, and an Irish poet whose work deserves to be much better known, Thomas Kinsella...

...Still, what counts for one man, even so distinguished a man as Rosenthal, is likely to differ a good deal from what counts for another...

...Why, for instance, should a poet like Howard Nemerov be represented by 14 pages and a poet who to my mind is superior...

...I have no doubt that Rosenthal would agree substantially with my evaluation...

...What this anthology fails to suggest is the location and peculiar strengths of our important contemporary poetry...

...The poems are collected according to the author's last name, without any attempt to categorize on the basis of technique or theme...

...one has only to read his criticism to know precisely where he stands...

...but it is vague as an index to the editor's preferences and judgments on what will last or perish...

...Whimsy and controlled lyricism are fine, but they are attributes shared by many of our poets, and so few of them have anything compelling to say...

...In addition, it demonstrates that the tradition inaugurated by men like Eliot and Pound has not suffered a serious decline...

...With the publication of her latest book Live Or Die, I am confident that Miss Sexton will receive the acclaim and study her work has long merited...

...M. L. Rosenthal is hardly the typical anthologist...

...Moreover, as already indicated, the distribution of space in the book seems often to have been dictated by extra-literary considerations...

...These idle whispers are not wholly unjustified or beside the point...

...Of course, we need not insist that all books be important, and Rosenthal's enables us to admire poems already familiar, even to uncover an occasional unsuspected gem...

...It is clear from Rosenthal's published criticism, however, that he does not believe any such thing...

...Spokesmen of the various poetic schools occasionally bring out collections of verse by their disciples or confreres, but such anthologies are usually conceived in the spirit of a holy crusade, proposing to demonstrate the unique significance of one poetic discipline...

...Nowhere, though, does the disposition of space in the anthology consistently reflect Rosenthal's conviction that the Sixties poets are minor figures who risk very little in terms of extending poetic form, and even less in charting new dimensions of human sensibility...

...Reading his selections, one is struck by the fact that in recent years modern American poetry has lost not only the great poets of the older generation, including Frost and Jeffers and Cummings, but younger people of genius like Roethke, Plath and Jarrell...

...Still, readers will surely enjoy this anthology for its rich variety...

...Rosenthal has ranged far to make what he considers the best selections, and few of his choices can be described as failures...

...One can merely hope people will be sufficiently impressed by the quality and diversity of the poetic modes exhibited to explore further, perhaps even to purchase a book of poems by one or two figures they especially enjoy...

...they have infused a simplicity and tranquil profundity into American poetry, making it available to many more potential readers...

...Indeed, at a time when so many of our practicing poets display great skill yet are hopelessly imitative, or fearful lest they betray an immoderate, rhetorically extravagant, and therefore somehow "unnatural" passion, his anthology is both proof of and a tribute to their compensating moments...

...These may be valid, but I would like to know what they were...

...The careful observer of the poetry scene will come away from this anthology without having his preconceptions shaken...

...The volume is not so much useful, then, as pleasurable...

...His anthology is extremely catholic, embracing the work of poets as disparate as Robert Lowell and LeRoi Jones, Allen Ginsberg and Richard Wilbur, as well as others who have flourished since the end of World War II...

...it is hard to know whether he is printing a poem because he likes it, because his acquaintances tell him he ought to, or because he went to high school with the poet...

...Rosenthal is not dogmatic??either as critic, editor or anthologist...

...Snodgrass, be limited to two...