Poetry for Posterity

“Cornucopial” is the neologism that suggested itself in response to this wonderful and hefty compendium of twenty-six essays that, in 716 pages, track modernism from its inception in the early years of the twentieth century to its current tributaries, descendants, offshoots, and responders (to mix four metaphors). Though there are consistent and/or recurrent themes as well as key figures (people as well as tropes) that recur throughout, the range of topics and writers that get their due here is exemplary, as is the level of scholarship and writing. Though broadly historicist in its orientation, the collection, inaugurated by editor Cary Nelson’s substantial introduction that emphasizes the innovative boldness of the century’s poetic development (itself punctuated by an experimental text comprising several pages of citations from poets discussed in Nelson’s own Revolutionary Memory [2001]), includes meditations on the relationship between poetry and anthropological fieldwork (Lytle Shaw’s “Fieldwork in New American Poetry: From Cosmology to Discourse,” which takes up William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Amiri Baraka as poets committed to the geo-material and/or historical depth of the “local” in multiple senses), poetry and cultural studies (Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s excellent and intensely condensed romp through the many ways in which poetic texts are social texts—and are rendered as such by critical attention—that kicks off the volume after Nelson’s more historiographic introduction), and poetry and mass culture (John Timberman Newcomb’s “Out with the Crowd: Modern American Poets Speaking to Mass Culture,” whose rousing opening salvo initiates a discussion of that cyclical relationship).

The volume creates a real sense of abundance and a reassurance that poetry scholarship is alive, kicking, and moving in the right direction: toward an interdisciplinary openness relatively unencumbered by excess regard for canonicity or the labored performance of formalist close readings that do not add to an argument—both typical problems in poetry scholarship—though there is certainly attention to well-known poets as well as close readings throughout the book. There’s a very sound balance, however, between the new and the expected, the literature-and-arts type of interdisciplinarity (Charles Altieri’s characteristically philosophically muscular essay on “Cézanne’s Ideal of ‘Realization’: A Useful Analogy for the Spirit of Modernity in American Poetry”) and the post-1968 attempt to create new social insight through unlikely juxtapositions (Jahan Ramazani’s startlingly fun and generative “American Poetry, Prayer, and the News”). The collection also finds an admirable balance between senior scholars such as Altieri, DuPlessis, Ramazani, and Michael Davidson, and emerging lights on the scene like Mike Chasar and Philip Metres, whose online presences as committed poetry bloggers speak to the growing and multiple audiences for poetries the Handbook implicitly documents. And further, it introduces topics to poetry studies that seriously need scholarly attention: the poetry of political prisoners (Mark Van Wienen), the relation between hip hop and the great twentieth-century movements in African-American poetry (James Smethurst), disability poetics (Michael Davidson), electronic poetics (Adalaide Morris), the aforementioned poetry-and-mass culture essay (Newcomb), eco-poetics (Lynn Keller), and transnationalism (Timothy Yu). There is a more than obligatory presence of excellent work on traditionally under-represented groups: several essays on African-American poetry, Asian-American poetry, essays that focus on gender (but none that focus on sexuality or queer, Latino/a, or spoken word poetics), and one on Native-American poetry that predates the 1960s, a very welcome addition to the mainstream discourse on American poetry

The verve of much of the writing—a real feat when the aim is handbook-style coverage—makes the book enjoyable as well as merely informative. Al Filreis’s essay on poetry books published in 1960, for example, bristles with energy and engagement as the juxtapositions of the styles and discourse communities represented by these many different books create mini-narratives of ideological and intellectual contestation. Mike Chasar’s lively, anecdotal writing takes up, through Michel de Certeau, the anonymity of “incidental” or “ambient” poetry and its...