The Great Modern Poets: An anthology of the essential poets and poetry since 1900

by Michael Schmidt

An essential introduction to the most significant poems and their works since 1900

Reproduced within this collection are some of the greatest poems of the 20th century, featuring works from major writers such as T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Langston Hughes and W.B. Yeats. For each, Michael Schmidt provides an insight into their themes and the background to their work, opening for the reader a deeper understanding and enjoyment of these extraordinary poems.

Poets
W.B. Yeats
Robert Frost
Edward Thomas
Philip Larkin
T.S. Eliot
Ted Hughes
Langston Hughes
Sylvia Plath
C.S Sisson
Derek Walcott
Ezra Pound
& many more!

Genres: Poetry

334 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 4, 2024

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the poets in this collection, I had read a portion (ranging from a sample, eg Thomas ‘Under Milk Wood’ to all, Plath) of fifteen of them. I came away wanting to read more Thomas, Housman, and Hardy – two out of three earlier poets in the timeline. I actually love Auden and Larkin, but overall I do not think the Modernists are to my taste. It may also be the fault of the selector in this case. Each poet, regardless of the size of their oeuvre, gets three poems showcased. The selector did not pick what I would have picked of Auden or Plath or Heaney or Yeats. Therein, perhaps, lies the rub.

Also, the biographies are annoyingly slim on emotional detail (uh, I’d say Ted Hughes’ infidelity has a big biographical role, ACTUALLY) and instead are full of the painful, tedious polysyllabic gargling that passes for literary criticism in the twenty-first century. How I wish critics wrote like C.S. Lewis or Northrup Frye these days!

Charlotte Mew, ‘Not for that City’:

‘No, I think we shun
The splendour of that ever-lasting glare,
The clamour of that never-ending song.
And if for anything we greatly long
It is for some remote and quiet stair
Which winds to silence and a space for sleep
Too sound for waking and for dreams too deep.’

Robert Frost, ‘Mowing’:

‘And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf’

Donald Davie, ‘Their Rectitude Their Beauty’:

‘The angels rejoice
in the excellencies of God;
the inferior creatures in
His Goodness; sinners only
in His forgiveness.’

Geoffrey Hill, ‘Genesis’:

‘By blood we live, the hot, the cold,
To ravage and redeem the world:
There is no bloodless myth will hold.’

Favourites:
Robert Frost, ‘Stopping by woods on a Snowing Evening’
Edward Thomas, ‘Lights Out’
Wallace Stevens, ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’
William Carlos Williams, ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’
ee cummings, ‘pity this busy monster, manunkind’
Robert Graves, ‘In Broken Images’
WH Auden, ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ – I wonder who wrote the Icarus image first? I prefer Williams’ version
Dylan Thomas, ‘The Hand that Signed’
Frank O’Hara, ‘Why I am not a Painter’
Les Murray, ‘The Meaning of Existence’

[Knitography · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthologies are difficult to review - by their very nature they tend to be inconsistent, and it's almost expected that any individual reader will find something to like, and something they can do without. That said...

This anthology shares a weakness with many anthologies of "great" writing, which that the focus is firmly (though not quite exclusively) on white men. Not only is this choice not contextualised in the introduction, the mini-biographies of the poets are flattering to the point of dishonesty via omission. For example, Ted Hughes' relationship with Sylvia Plath is referred to as "creatively fruitful" in its early years with no mention of his alleged abuse - whereas in Plath's mini-bio Hughes is referred to as the "unusual Englishman" that she married and later separated from. I'm not suggesting that their relationship should be treated as the defining characteristic for either of them, but glossing over the messy toxicity of their dynamic is revisionist at best, especially in light of Hughes' questionable choices in editing Plath's work after her death.

I found myself wondering what details had been omitted in the biographies of the poets I was previously unfamiliar with - I don't want to have to research each of them individually, that's why I got an anthology. I suppose you can argue that an anthology has limited space and is meant to be introductory, but really it doesn't take up much space to say that Ezra Pound was a dumpster fire of a human being - a virulent anti-semite, racist, Nazi sympathiser and fascist (not to mention a negligent parent). I'm not someone who believes in separating the art from the artist to begin with, and I find it particularly difficult to do that in the case of poetry, given the nature of the art form.

All of that said, this collection introduced me to some poets I hadn't heard of previously (as I am, admittedly, not at all well educated on poetry) and whose work I enjoyed, so in that sense the anthology did its job. It also reminded me how timeless art can be; "While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity" (Robinson Jeffers - Shine, Perishing Republic) could just as easily have been written today as 100 years ago.

[RichVT · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like to read poetry anthologies. In the best ones, there is a brief description of the poet for context, or no description in the body but summary biographies as an appendix. In this collection, the introductions are pedantic description of the poets style and concerns which are not that interesting if you have not read one of their poems. Even then the descriptions are encompassing enough to. Result in vague sensibilities. Ultimately these intros are a bewildering litany of descriptives.
The poems themselves seem unusual selections , different than other anthologies. It is not @ very accessible group of poems.
Overall this book does not do much to draw one into poetry.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so well done. Each poet gets a 1-pager biography which even includes their personality and interactions with others (bonus points for pointing out how antisemitic Pound was!), but the selections for their work showcase less famous poems that the reader may be unfamiliar with. I discovered new voices here - Charlotte Mew and Donald Davie - and really enjoyed this volume.