Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry

by Poetry Society, Peter Forbes (Editor)

The 20th century has been one of great turbulence, profound shifts in sensibility, and enormous changes in lifestyle. As this anthology brilliantly demonstrates, the poetry of the last hundred years has been both a mirror and a gloss to the age. Drawing on poetry written in English and in translation, Peter Forbes' aim has been to capture this century's flavor "with something like the tang of newsreel and the zest of popular song." There are 39 sections, which run the gamut of from Omens (Brodsky, Hardy, Kipling) to The Jazz Age (Mayakovsky, Eliot, Hughes), from The Holocaust (Auden, Rumens, Levi) to The Sixties (Dylan, Lennon, McCartney), from The Arts (Stevens, Prvert, Yevtushenko) to Love and Sex (Larkin, Adcock, Gunn). As ambitious, various, and energetic as its subject, Scanning the Century offers both history and poetry in one artful and illuminating volume. Peter Forbes is the editor of Poetry Review.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

596 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Alasdair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this first just after the 20th century had ended and, being without the perspectives of experience and distance, hadn't appreciated just what a good job it does. It is a masterful survey of both the historical and social sweep of the century and of poetry itself, and serves as a crash course in both. Nor is it as anglocentric as it might have been - there is a substantial proportion of translated poems that introduces a broader European experience as well as African and South American; Asia is least represented but still present.

[Palmyrah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide-ranging anthology of the past century's poetry, including lots of poems in translation. Few of these, I'm sorry to say, work; poetry doesn't lend itself well to translation, even if the translator is himself a poet. However, there are riches enow among the English poetry on display here.

The poems are grouped under different subject headings and chronologically under each heading. The subjects are also grouped in rough chronological order. This seems to be a reasonable way to proceed, but it isn't an arrangement that lends itself either to gentle browsing or to easy reference. A titles/first lines index helps enormously in the latter connexion, though the reader is still left to guess, as best he or she can, when a particular poem was written. I, for one, find this quite frustration.

All the usual suspects are here, of course. Eliot, the Peradeniya Mafia favourite, has aged badly; in addition to sounding uptight, detached and repressed as he always did, he has acquired a distinct quality of the ridiculous. Auden and Louis MacNiece (whom Porter calls the guiding spirits of the anthology) have aged far better, especially the former. But in poetry, as in humour, it's chacun à son goût, so I'll leave you to find your own favourites.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not enough poetry, lots of events--poems without much poetry in them. Carol Ann Duffy has 5 poems, beat only by WH Auden and Louise MacNeice. These are newspaper articles.
And I won't ever read all of it, because reading bad poetry makes me write badly.
Two stars because there are a lot of poems and some of them very good; but as an anthology, one star. (A lot of poems, but, again, not enough poetry.)

[Avian Dewanto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a poet lover. And, this book is a collection of the world class' poetry writers want to explain how was things happen in the 20th century. Of course, a poet can express all human imagination end expression. I don't think how many books will publish to describe what happen in a century. Reminds me of a book named Quran which explain the beginning of time until the end.

[Roshan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me nearly 5 years to read this, a few poems at a time. But so worth it!

[Josephine · Rating 5 out of 5]

my all time favourite poetry anthology!

[Mills College Library]

808.8104 S2839 1999