Volume 47, Number 14 · September 21, 2000
No Laughing Matter
By Brad Leithauser
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker
Library of America, 986 pp., $35.00
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume Two: E.E. Cummings to May Swenson
Library of America, 1,009 pp., $35.00
Anyone who has ever compiled an anthology knows how the field under survey has a way of expanding month by month; how once-firm assessments melt in the heat of repeated rereadings; and how—notwithstanding all vows to remain true to one's own taste and better judgment—a dispiriting sensation of arbitrariness creeps into the selection process. It's easy to understand how, seen from a long way off, a new anthology may carry an air of calculation in its every feature. But glimpsed up close, the anthology is apt to look like a catch-as-catch-can enterprise, assembled by people who had healthy doubts every step of the way.
Review, 4684 words
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