Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

by Richard Ellmann (Editor ), Robert O'Clair (Editor)

From the reviews: "This is a great anthology of modern poetry, in the sense that it is absolutely massive (almost 2,000 pages!), and includes well over a hundred poets with a biography and good selection of poems from each one. It made me realize that I don't like modern poetry very much, but on the other hand it feels good to know I will never need to buy another book of modern poetry again."

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Reference, Fiction, Classics, Literature, Contemporary

1865 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Richard David Ellmann was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century. Its 1982 revised edition won James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Ellmann was a liberal humanist, and his academic work focuses on the major modernist writers of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Charles Bechtel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome to the graveyard of forgotten poets. About half of these poets have been obliterated from discussions, another third hangs on as historically important, and about 20% heralded as Ist-icons of other some -Ism. Although Norton has selected a number of the most topical and respected poets of the early twentieth century, and some late twentieth, the book is only worth having because it has so many poems in it. If you like poetry, own a Norton.

By the way, nobody "reads" this book. They wend through it, and often at various times and in various ways.

[J. Boo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spent a significant amount of time with this for 12th grade English. I was a fast and compulsive reader, so I wound up reading most, if not all of the collection. Includes some of the limited amount of decent stuff written in the twentieth century, and oodles of awful, pretentious dreck.

You know
the sort. A bunch
of prose, sometimes (ill-times)
poorly written
and
with numerous linebreaks
else lines that go on and on and on and on and on and on
fore/ever
For reasons
difficult to
discern.
This un-ness of discernation
is the beauty (of course! the beauty!)
Many (so many) PhDs can have
dissertations
piled higher and deeper
explicating
this
dross.
(PS Sex needs to
be here
somewhere so
here it is.)

Anyway, I found it enjoyable in the train wreck sense and I did appreciate the mini-biographies of the (alleged) poets. Plonked down a quarter a year or two later to get it at a library sale.

I do wonder what my reaction would be today. C.S. Lewis, who didn't like modern poetry, nevertheless made a rather profound defense of it, even as he sketched out a possible future where poetry itself would wither away from everywhere but the curriculum. This future seems even closer today.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sucker helped me breeze through the modernist stuff on the lit test. It's got enough biographical info and info about how critics classify the poets to help you remember the difference between similar dudes (and dudettes), and most of the poems are exemplary of their styles. A great primer, and a great book to have if you don't plan on buying volumes and volumes of modernist poems!

[Shawn Thrasher]

After 19 months, 181 poets, 1,580 poems, I’m finally finished with this brick of a book. Slow and steady does win the race indeed. My favorite poems from here are too many to list; my favorite poets are still the same poets I liked when I started this back in January 2020, plus a few more. I don’t think I understand Modern Poetry any better than I did 19 months ago, but I still respect, admire, and perhaps even envy these poets and poets in general. I came away with a new appreciate for Robert Frost and Allen Ginsberg. I thought a poem called “The Wheelchair Butterfly” was amazing. I thought another poem by Leslie Marmon Silko called “It Was A Long Time Before” still haunts myself dreams. I’m still not a fan of Emily Dickinson or T.S. Eliot. I wonder who made it into the next editions, and who was removed (Rudyard Kipling, I hope). This must be what the finish line of a marathon feels like. Best of all: I’m not tired of poetry, not even one little bit.

[Gary McDowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Right now (9/11/07), it's Whitman, Dickinson, and the intro. Soon it'll be Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Williams, etc.

Now (9/13/07) it's time for 55 pages of micro-sized print William Butler Yeats. Oh boy.

[Amanda]

i love anthologies, am a collector of them. i purchased this one used for my poetry courses at U of Ottawa about 12 years ago & i return to it often. this summer i've decided to revisit the dead, so this is a perfect book for such. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet tea, Susie Assado...

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can we all just agree that anthologies are helpful things to have on one's shelf, but ultimately unsatisfying? They never go in-depth enough on the authors one likes, and seem to stretch out forever on authors one wants nothing to do with. Oh well: they're also great introducers of authors one didn't know (or know well enough) before. The guys on this list that I met in this book include Brother Antoninus, Sigfreid Sassoon, Marianne Moore, Denise Levertov, WH Auden, and Delmore Schwartz. Also, everyone needs to read more Pound, Cummings, and WC Williams. In that order.

[carl theaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to purchase for, what else? Modern poetry class, and glad I did, kept
after college. Have read through this and that passage many times, a great
book to keep at the bedside, pick a poet fer an eve, after dark and before
the dawn surprises you.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may never actually finish this book as it's an anthology, I pick it up every once in a while to re-read favorite poems that are included and new ones I haven't encountered yet. This is an outstanding collection.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, Norton, how I love thee. These anthologies are awesome--both for the great works they include and for the interesting information about authors.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a bookshelf basic as far as I'm concerned.

[Dave H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Norton, Norton, pudding and pie.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just open anywhere and learn something!

[Foxygiraffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, obviously I haven't read the WHOLE thing, but it's on my shelf.

[Chris]

currently reading, ad infinitum. ask joe sacksteader

[Cage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome awesome selection. Cannot rate it highly enough.

[Sana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the Walt Whitman poems.

[Spike Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it certain *is* the completest, for 1989 anyways.
The collection starts with Whitman and Dickinson and ends with a collection of really forgettable stuff from a bunch of people who got MFAs in creative writing in the 70s and 80s. Along the way, depending on how one views it, one can see either the declining public profile of written poetry over the 20th century, or the rise of diverse voices (who all happen to teach English at a college or university and write mostly in free verse or structures of their own devising).

It's fairly sad. Not *all* contemporary poetry is horrible. I'm hardly one of those people who think that the last poet in the English language of any worth was Hardy or Frost. But honestly, most of it is cryptic unaesthetic navel-gazing that no one outside of an English department would read with any sense of pleasure, pay money to own a volume or hear spoken by the writer. Certainly one of the benefits of this collection is finding some of the few contemporary poets one actually likes. With nearly 2,000 pages it would be hard not to.

That said, it's tough to go from such well known poets and influential figures in the course of national history and culture like Yeats and Pound, to counterculture figures of great import... to an endless roll call of English professors who at times can conjure up evocative images or thought provoking lines, but are utterly forgettable and cookie-cutter in their personas, aesthetics and social values, whether they be as differing in origin as a gay black man or Native American woman or English Jew.

All in all, I think it's a bit too late to rescue poetry from its current state of cultural irrelevance. Heck, it was already a couple decades too late even in 1989. I think there are other more technologically current mediums that fill that emotional and aesthetic niche for the masses. It will always have its place in history, and there will still be practitioners of the craft.

What I most fondly hope for, is for the rescue of the form from its current academic ghetto and back to an artform practiced by aristocrats, revolutionaries, soldiers, longshoremen, doctors, insurance executives and unemployed junkies without any hope or desire of gaining a sinecure through it.

[Pachyderm Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Begins with Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the (great) grandparents of so–called "modern (Ameican) poetry. Ends with James Tate, another favorite of mine who recently passed away. Runs the gamut in-between, from the Harlem Renaissance Poets to anything else goes, which seems so prevalent in "modern poetry" today, especially with literary magazine verse, the advent of "spoken word" and "hip-hop" subcultures, and the rise and continuing decline of modern (worldwide) social media.

[Etienne]

This is a spectacular collection. I’ve grazed over these pages—in no particular order—in the many decades since purchasing Norton for an English literature class in the late 1970’s. I can’t swear that I’ve read every single poem, but surely I’ve read most of them and am likely to keep reading and rereading for years to come.

(“Dr. Potatohead Talks to Mothers” by Judith Johnson Sherwin is a favorite but I can find zero reference using Google searches.)

[Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not read this cover to cover but probably read the biographical information and all the selected works for about 1/3 of the authors (about 450 pages of poetry).

Read from Hardy, Frost, and Yeats to Auden, Crane, and Thomas. I will list the authors later along with a star for my favorite authors & styles (from what I can remember.)


Read this for Modern Poetry class Jan-June 2018

[dal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn’t the exact copy to the modern poetry book I read but I couldn’t help to add it on here because the amount of poems I have in this edition is so good, I personally have not found some of them elsewhere before.

[James Finch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this anthology in college and enjoyed the read again after so many years. Poetry is a joy! Great poetry remains with you forever.

[Amy in the Desert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great anthology and good way to find poets you like. The doorstopper every English major faces. :)

[Nice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for your library that you constantly refer back to, that helps introduce you to some of the greatest poet living and dead. I am so thankful my Poetry Writing Prof made us buy this. Shoutout to John Matthias at the University of Notre Dame. I will always be currently reading this book.

[Lynda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, truth be told I do not like much modern poetry. A few years ago after on of my long recoveries from surgery, I went through this anthology to see if any poets appealed to me that I might want to read further. There were a few, also a few I liked a lot, but I still like the older poets better.

[Derek H · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eew.

[Shel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought it in college, still the best one anthology I've got -- and written all over!

[— · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of poems. Very expansive.