Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets

by Nicholas Christopher

Gathers poems by thirty-seven of the most promising new American poets

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Nicholas Christopher was born and raised in New York City. He was educated at Harvard College, where he studied with Robert Lowell and Anthony Hecht. Afterward, he traveled and lived in Europe. He became a regular contributor to the New Yorker in his early twenties, and began publishing his work in other leading magazines, both in the United States and abroad, including Esquire, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, and the Paris Review. He has appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Poetry, the Paris Review 50th Anniversary Anthology, the Best American Poetry, Poet's Choice, the Everyman's Library Poems of New York and Conversation Pieces, the Norton Anthology of Love, the Faber Book of Movie Verse, and the Grand Street Reader. He has edited two major anthologies himself, Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (Anchor, 1989) and Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975 (Scribner, 1994) and has translated Martial and Catullus and several modern Greek poets, including George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos. His books have been translated and published many other countries, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from various institutions, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Yale, Barnard College, and New York University, and is now a Professor on the permanent faculty of the Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Constance Christopher, and continues to travel widely, most frequently to Venice, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and the Grenadines.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some really good poems in this anthology. I happened to pick it up at my local Free Mini Library and it has been well read and reread for the past two years. Most favorite is Earth by Lynn Doyle: super rugged day in suburbia interrupted by the neighbor; poignant and raw; then Desire by Kathy Fagan: I love a poem in the second person, talking to me making me the character, the receiver, the witness; then Jack Shelley’s Emergency: is it heartache? Is it reminisce? Is it the ruminations of our collective selves as we too burn the fish? Then Cole Swensen’s Three Hours sums up the musings of my life in the night. All of my favorites are very storytelling-style, matter-of-fact poetry seeped in narrative. The rest are amazing as well and I say, check this one out next time you have a hankering to find a muse for your inner poet.

[Indy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another favorite modern compilation of Poetry...Someday I hope to have the contentment like the couple from "The Pillow" by Cyrus Cassells:

"See, their bodies have twisted into an old branch."

Really a wonderful anthology.

[India · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book. Some poets were really fun or interesting to read and some were not so much. It was worth the read to find some new voices.