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XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century
A poetic history of the twentieth century from one of our most beloved, popular, and highly lauded poets—a stirring, strikingly original, intensely imagined recreation of the most potent voices and searing moments that have shaped our collective experience.XX is award-winning poet Campbell McGrath’s astonishing sequence of one hundred poems—one per year—written in a vast range of forms, and in the voices of figures as varied as Picasso and Mao, Frida Kahlo and Elvis Presley. Based on years of historical research and cultural investigation, XX turns poetry into an archival inquiry and a choral documentary. Hollywood and Hiroshima, Modernism and propaganda, Bob Dylan and Walter Benjamin—its range of interest encompasses the entire century of art and culture, invention and struggle.Elegiac and celebratory, deeply tragic and wickedly funny, XX is a unique collection from this acknowledged master of historical poetry, and his most ambitious book yet.
240 pages, Unknown Binding
First published March 22, 2016
63 people are currently reading
309 people want to read
About the author
Campbell McGrath
32 books39 followersCampbell McGrath (born 1962) is a modern American poet. He is the author of nine full-length collections of poetry, including his most recent, Seven Notebooks (Ecco Press, 2008), Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Ecco Press, 2009), and In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys (Ecco Press, forthcoming, 2012).
Contents
1 Life
2 Music
3 Awards
4 Works
5 Bibliography
6 References
7 External links
Life
McGrath was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Washington, D.C., where he attended Sidwell Friends School; among his classmates was the poet Elizabeth Alexander. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1984 and his MFA from Columbia University's creative writing program in 1988, where he was classmates with Rick Moody. He currently lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University, where his students have included Richard Blanco, Susan Briante, Jay Snodgrass and Emma Trelles. He is married to Elizabeth Lichtenstein, whom he met while he was an undergraduate; they have two sons.[1]
Music
In the early 1980s, while a student at the University of Chicago, he was a member of the punk band Men From The Manly Planet.[2]
Awards
McGrath has been recognized by some of the most prestigious American poetry awards, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (for "The Bob Hope Poem" in Spring Comes to Chicago, his third book of poems), a Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award." In 2011 he was named a Fellow of United States Artists.[3]
Works
While primarily known as a poet, McGrath has also written a play, "The Autobiography of Edvard Munch" (produced by Concrete Gothic Theater, Chicago, 1983); a libretto for Orlando Garcia's experimental video opera "Transcending Time" (premiered at the New Music Biennalle, Zagreb, Croatia, 2009); collaborated with the video artist John Stuart on the video/poetry piece "14 Views of Miami" (premiered at The Wolfsonian, Miami, 2008); and translated the Aristophanes play The Wasps for the Penn Greek Drama Series.
Bibliography
Dust (chapbook, Ohio Review Press, 1988)
Capitalism (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)
American Noise (Ecco Press, 1993)
Spring Comes to Chicago (Ecco Press, 1996)
Road Atlas (Ecco Press, 1999)
Mangrovia (chapbook, Short Line Editions, 2001)
Florida Poems (Ecco Press, 2002)
Pax Atomica (Ecco Press, 2004)
Heart of Anthracite: New & Collected Prose Poems (Stride Press, UK)
Seven Notebooks (Ecco Press, 2008)
Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Ecco Press, 2009)
The Custodian & Other Poems (chapbook, Floating Wolf Quarterly, 2011)
In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys (Ecco Press, 2012)
References
Contents
1 Life
2 Music
3 Awards
4 Works
5 Bibliography
6 References
7 External links
Life
McGrath was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Washington, D.C., where he attended Sidwell Friends School; among his classmates was the poet Elizabeth Alexander. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1984 and his MFA from Columbia University's creative writing program in 1988, where he was classmates with Rick Moody. He currently lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University, where his students have included Richard Blanco, Susan Briante, Jay Snodgrass and Emma Trelles. He is married to Elizabeth Lichtenstein, whom he met while he was an undergraduate; they have two sons.[1]
Music
In the early 1980s, while a student at the University of Chicago, he was a member of the punk band Men From The Manly Planet.[2]
Awards
McGrath has been recognized by some of the most prestigious American poetry awards, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (for "The Bob Hope Poem" in Spring Comes to Chicago, his third book of poems), a Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award." In 2011 he was named a Fellow of United States Artists.[3]
Works
While primarily known as a poet, McGrath has also written a play, "The Autobiography of Edvard Munch" (produced by Concrete Gothic Theater, Chicago, 1983); a libretto for Orlando Garcia's experimental video opera "Transcending Time" (premiered at the New Music Biennalle, Zagreb, Croatia, 2009); collaborated with the video artist John Stuart on the video/poetry piece "14 Views of Miami" (premiered at The Wolfsonian, Miami, 2008); and translated the Aristophanes play The Wasps for the Penn Greek Drama Series.
Bibliography
Dust (chapbook, Ohio Review Press, 1988)
Capitalism (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)
American Noise (Ecco Press, 1993)
Spring Comes to Chicago (Ecco Press, 1996)
Road Atlas (Ecco Press, 1999)
Mangrovia (chapbook, Short Line Editions, 2001)
Florida Poems (Ecco Press, 2002)
Pax Atomica (Ecco Press, 2004)
Heart of Anthracite: New & Collected Prose Poems (Stride Press, UK)
Seven Notebooks (Ecco Press, 2008)
Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Ecco Press, 2009)
The Custodian & Other Poems (chapbook, Floating Wolf Quarterly, 2011)
In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys (Ecco Press, 2012)
References
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
June 8, 2020
A poem for each year of the XXth century. Quite an undertaking and, as you might imagine, inconsistent to the core. Quirky character selections, many of the topics famous XXth century writers as you'd expect (Anna Akhmatova, Apollinaire, Virginia Woolf, Kafka, Sylvia Plath & Hubby Ted, Rilke, John Ashbery). Still, there are many more artists here, too, and often repeat poems about artists, most notably Pablo Picasso. I gather, then, that P-Squared is a favorite of the author's!
Some of the poems didn't even rate as poems, I fear. Not even prose poems, at least in my mind. More just factual info on a particular year's high and more likely lowlights. If you want to improve your vocabulary, though, McGrath is your man. Lots and lots of words to keep both Merriam and Webster jumping. Me, too. I've marked them and, some century, (maybe the XXIst) plan to look them up for the betterment of my sorry self.
Some of the poems didn't even rate as poems, I fear. Not even prose poems, at least in my mind. More just factual info on a particular year's high and more likely lowlights. If you want to improve your vocabulary, though, McGrath is your man. Lots and lots of words to keep both Merriam and Webster jumping. Me, too. I've marked them and, some century, (maybe the XXIst) plan to look them up for the betterment of my sorry self.
June 11, 2017
Too limited, I think.
Campbell McGrath's collection of poems documents the twentieth century, a poem per year, usually told in the voice of someone alive that year. It begins with Picasso, who remains a presence long into the book: the twentieth century as the birth of modernism, the collection of poems as cubist facets on the century. And, indeed, French modernism m dominates the early parts of the volume, Matisse and Stein joining Picasso.
There are other voices, as well. We hear much from Mao as he grows up, joins the revolutionary army, suffers his setbacks, and works his way back, his triumphs China's pain. By a third or maybe midway through, the center of gravity shifts away from Europe to America--this is, as Henry Luce sad, America's century. Even if some of those voices are critical of what America is: Woody Guthrie is present in a number of poems. And, later, Bob Dylan. Zora Neale Hurston, John Coltrane, Orson Welles. And also: Simon de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Jane Goodall. Frida Kahlo.
Even the voiceless, given a voice: the last passenger pigeon, Voyager I and II, The Berlin Wall, Dolly the cloned sheep, watches, and clocks, and the planet. Modernism giving way to post-Modernism, radical subjectivity to post-humanism. McGrath's voice comes in with the later poems, too, his own life with those of the figures he is inhabiting, an authorial intrusion into the text.
The book is ambitious, then, and smart. There was a great dal of reading and thinking that went into it. There are lines of connections between the poems, ideas spreading and moving across them, drawing the collection tight. One hears the echoes of other writers: E. L. Doctorow and his historical fiction, Kenneth Rexroth's roughly metered verse. Apollinaire, Miłosz. And back of it all, authorizing the collection, Walt Whitman: "I contain multitudes."
The voices that McGrath gives to the various characters are credible. And he can be funny in a dry way, at times. "The Death of Edward Hopper (1967)" evokes Hopper's most well-known work of art without using the title in the first few lines: "Night after night the foghorn
like a great horned owl watching over the harbor," though in this case the bird is an owl and not a hawk. Other times, though, his attempts fall flat: there is the ridiculous faux-philosophical debate between Gates and Jobs at the end of the book that, rather than highlight and puncture the silliness of the fin de siecle, embodies it.
And yet--for all its ambition, the book seems too tame. The list of names are not exactly the who's who of the 20th century--there are few politicians--but neither to they really get us below the superficial view of 20th century. It is art history 101. The planet is slowly being killed by humans. Capitalism devours dissent, and television presents the spectacle on screens in everyone's home. Rock and roll cannot really save the world, but it's going to try. And after a while, the voices become repetitive: Picasso with some new woman, his misogyny, his desire to create art. Mao in some new revolutionary circumstance, his ruthlessness, his epigrammatic summation of same.
This is very much a collection of poems by a baby boomer. The attempts to stretch beyond the expected are, in themselves, fairly expected: John Coltrane, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Bolaño, Nelson Mandela. Very few of the choices surprise, or offer more than the conventional history of the 20th century. The authorial intrusion after 1962 puts McGrath on equal footing to these others, which doesn't really bring them down as raise him up, part of the axis of the world.
Which is fine, I guess, and what McGrath seemed to want to do. It is too cruel to say that this is his "We Didn't Start the Fire," but there's family resemblance between Billy Joel's song and this collection. And I wanted something more, a wider expanse, a messier view of this century, one that captured a more diverse set of voices. That's my own problem. McGrath did the work, and presented what he wanted here, the ambition of the idea clipped by the conventionality of its enactment.
Campbell McGrath's collection of poems documents the twentieth century, a poem per year, usually told in the voice of someone alive that year. It begins with Picasso, who remains a presence long into the book: the twentieth century as the birth of modernism, the collection of poems as cubist facets on the century. And, indeed, French modernism m dominates the early parts of the volume, Matisse and Stein joining Picasso.
There are other voices, as well. We hear much from Mao as he grows up, joins the revolutionary army, suffers his setbacks, and works his way back, his triumphs China's pain. By a third or maybe midway through, the center of gravity shifts away from Europe to America--this is, as Henry Luce sad, America's century. Even if some of those voices are critical of what America is: Woody Guthrie is present in a number of poems. And, later, Bob Dylan. Zora Neale Hurston, John Coltrane, Orson Welles. And also: Simon de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Jane Goodall. Frida Kahlo.
Even the voiceless, given a voice: the last passenger pigeon, Voyager I and II, The Berlin Wall, Dolly the cloned sheep, watches, and clocks, and the planet. Modernism giving way to post-Modernism, radical subjectivity to post-humanism. McGrath's voice comes in with the later poems, too, his own life with those of the figures he is inhabiting, an authorial intrusion into the text.
The book is ambitious, then, and smart. There was a great dal of reading and thinking that went into it. There are lines of connections between the poems, ideas spreading and moving across them, drawing the collection tight. One hears the echoes of other writers: E. L. Doctorow and his historical fiction, Kenneth Rexroth's roughly metered verse. Apollinaire, Miłosz. And back of it all, authorizing the collection, Walt Whitman: "I contain multitudes."
The voices that McGrath gives to the various characters are credible. And he can be funny in a dry way, at times. "The Death of Edward Hopper (1967)" evokes Hopper's most well-known work of art without using the title in the first few lines: "Night after night the foghorn
like a great horned owl watching over the harbor," though in this case the bird is an owl and not a hawk. Other times, though, his attempts fall flat: there is the ridiculous faux-philosophical debate between Gates and Jobs at the end of the book that, rather than highlight and puncture the silliness of the fin de siecle, embodies it.
And yet--for all its ambition, the book seems too tame. The list of names are not exactly the who's who of the 20th century--there are few politicians--but neither to they really get us below the superficial view of 20th century. It is art history 101. The planet is slowly being killed by humans. Capitalism devours dissent, and television presents the spectacle on screens in everyone's home. Rock and roll cannot really save the world, but it's going to try. And after a while, the voices become repetitive: Picasso with some new woman, his misogyny, his desire to create art. Mao in some new revolutionary circumstance, his ruthlessness, his epigrammatic summation of same.
This is very much a collection of poems by a baby boomer. The attempts to stretch beyond the expected are, in themselves, fairly expected: John Coltrane, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Bolaño, Nelson Mandela. Very few of the choices surprise, or offer more than the conventional history of the 20th century. The authorial intrusion after 1962 puts McGrath on equal footing to these others, which doesn't really bring them down as raise him up, part of the axis of the world.
Which is fine, I guess, and what McGrath seemed to want to do. It is too cruel to say that this is his "We Didn't Start the Fire," but there's family resemblance between Billy Joel's song and this collection. And I wanted something more, a wider expanse, a messier view of this century, one that captured a more diverse set of voices. That's my own problem. McGrath did the work, and presented what he wanted here, the ambition of the idea clipped by the conventionality of its enactment.
May 10, 2017
I was completely engrossed from page one. This book is a year-by-year journey through the twentieth century, each poem written from the viewpoint of a major cultural icon in a specific year. Different poetic forms, too, are part of the structural strategy of the book. The poems are stunningly beautiful, imaginative, and thought-provoking. Reading them was like taking a trip through time while looking through a kaleidoscope: myriad viewpoints, different voices, various poetic styles. I emerged with a heightened sense of how quickly an entire century passes, and of the amazing kindness and cruelty of human beings in different situations, whether those circumstances be incredible or mundane. If you want to know and understand what the twentieth century was like, and how close to the past we actually are, skip the history textbook and check out these poems. You are in for a treat.
This book was a runner-up for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
This book was a runner-up for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
July 18, 2017
4.5 stars. This shouldn't have worked. It seemed too gimmicky. Even so, it did work. For several reasons. First, the poems are varied and well-wrought. Most are finely crafted and the poetry shined throughout. A few exceptions, but for the most part, the poems were first-rate. McGrath is a poet's poet. Second, while the people and events chosen (1 per year for each year of the 20th Century) seemed almost arbitrary, I liked that it avoided focusing on a certain typecast--there was variety, from indisputable masters (Picasso) to the lowly (the last passenger pigeon). Third, the book was rich with ideas and insight into the human condition. Overall an exceptional collection with a number I will return to again.
March 29, 2018
100 poems - one for each year of the 20th century. pretty enjoyable read.
November 16, 2022
Poetry is not my thing so I couldn't rate it any higher than this, but I'm sure a real poetry enthusiast would appreciate this far more than I. It is very clear that Mr McGrath is definitely a bright minded fellow.
August 5, 2018
Actual rating: 3.5 stars
This was a difficult book to come to an opinion about. On the one hand, the idea is really cool and the execution is often good, on the other hand, the poems are pretty wildly variable in quality, tone, and type. Of course, some variation in tone and type is good; a book gets dull if every poem feels exactly the same. This book however is truly wild--it has pieces like "Andy Warhol: Waterfall of Dollar Signs (1987)" which is literally what the title describes and no more alongside simple lyric and narrative poems of varying quality. I largely didn't like poems that dealt extensively in rhyme or rigid meter--I felt that they were forced and lacking both the formal cleverness of some of the more experimental moments (like "Jacques Derrida (1970)" which is two t's, two e's, and two x's arranged around a dot, or "Hiroshima (1945)" which graphically represents an explosion in a's, o's and asterisks) and the natural storytelling and quality of metaphor of the other, more open, poems. I also felt that some of those most experimental moments, "Hiroshima (1945)" and "Andy Warhol: Waterfall of Dollar Signs (1987)" in particular, were not adequately prepared-for. The book is not, on balance, a book of experimental poetry and I as a reader was not really prepared to switch into the frame of mind necessary to appreciate these artworks that are at least as much visual as they are linguistic because they are not "readable" in a conventional sense. Similarly, there were several concrete poems that were composed of readable words, but they usually didn't have a narrative or grammatical logic to them and I couldn't always figure out what all of the component parts had to do with the ostensible topic, which raises the question of why these words and not others and of course, in poetry, that question should be answerable.
There were also, however, several very good poems scattered throughout the book. I really liked all of the Frida Kahlo poems; "Guernica (1937)"; the Virginia Woolf poems; the Apollinaire poems; "The Pulse of the Planet (1962)"; "Georgia O'Keefe (1983)"; "Lee Atwater's Apocalyptic Dream (1991), and "Digital Clocks (1992)". All of these poems had some real brilliance to them, but they also got buried a little bit in the rest of the 102 poems that made up the collection.
This was a difficult book to come to an opinion about. On the one hand, the idea is really cool and the execution is often good, on the other hand, the poems are pretty wildly variable in quality, tone, and type. Of course, some variation in tone and type is good; a book gets dull if every poem feels exactly the same. This book however is truly wild--it has pieces like "Andy Warhol: Waterfall of Dollar Signs (1987)" which is literally what the title describes and no more alongside simple lyric and narrative poems of varying quality. I largely didn't like poems that dealt extensively in rhyme or rigid meter--I felt that they were forced and lacking both the formal cleverness of some of the more experimental moments (like "Jacques Derrida (1970)" which is two t's, two e's, and two x's arranged around a dot, or "Hiroshima (1945)" which graphically represents an explosion in a's, o's and asterisks) and the natural storytelling and quality of metaphor of the other, more open, poems. I also felt that some of those most experimental moments, "Hiroshima (1945)" and "Andy Warhol: Waterfall of Dollar Signs (1987)" in particular, were not adequately prepared-for. The book is not, on balance, a book of experimental poetry and I as a reader was not really prepared to switch into the frame of mind necessary to appreciate these artworks that are at least as much visual as they are linguistic because they are not "readable" in a conventional sense. Similarly, there were several concrete poems that were composed of readable words, but they usually didn't have a narrative or grammatical logic to them and I couldn't always figure out what all of the component parts had to do with the ostensible topic, which raises the question of why these words and not others and of course, in poetry, that question should be answerable.
There were also, however, several very good poems scattered throughout the book. I really liked all of the Frida Kahlo poems; "Guernica (1937)"; the Virginia Woolf poems; the Apollinaire poems; "The Pulse of the Planet (1962)"; "Georgia O'Keefe (1983)"; "Lee Atwater's Apocalyptic Dream (1991), and "Digital Clocks (1992)". All of these poems had some real brilliance to them, but they also got buried a little bit in the rest of the 102 poems that made up the collection.
July 6, 2018
What do we make of how McGrath devotes only one or two poems to each World War, while at the same time giving us eight poems about Picasso and three about Frida Kahlo? Is this the way a masterful poet subverts our expectations about what the 20th century was, or is the book's packaging to blame? Maybe it's more accurate to call these 100 poems – one for each year – "poems for the twentieth century's art." Maybe that's the point: that within the limits of a single century's current events we are inflexibly bounded, but in an exploration of that century's art we grow boundless. Either way, you'll have to forgive me. I've been a bit out of sorts since McGrath's Elvis poem made me tear up.
May 13, 2020
I love the concept: A century of topics. Some were really as if written by the person (like Elvis or Picasso) while others were about events. Very clever and well-done. My one beef, as this may have to do with my ignorance, some of the poems were about people I've never heard of before and there were no clues in the poems about what they did or stood for.
December 1, 2018
Great work. I especially liked the Dolly clone poem--aab aab baa baa; so cool.
February 3, 2019
3 out 5. Too much Picasso.
(There are a few bits that really hit me like: “There is nothing romantic in the poverty of artists except to those who ogle the starving”)
(There are a few bits that really hit me like: “There is nothing romantic in the poverty of artists except to those who ogle the starving”)
October 18, 2023
This collection of poems are each from the point of view of one subject for each year of the 20th Century. It's an ambitious project, and in most ways is quite good.
Unfortunately, I'm neither a history nor a poetry girl, which puts me at a major disadvantage for this book. Don't get me wrong: I liked it. It was good, and McGrath clearly put in the effort. But a lot of it fell flat for me personally.
The subjects that he chose to be, for the lack of a better phrase, the main characters, was almost more interesting that some of the poems. It felt like the book would've benefitted from an intro paragraph telling me his thought process, because it's not like these were all big names in world (well, European and American, mostly) history. That's not a criticism, to be clear. Just an observation, and I'd love to know why some of these subjects were chosen. My favorite poems were often the ones with non-human speakers, as that was giving a unique spotlight on history. It just felt a little random.
On a similar note, I probably would've benefitted from reading a history textbook before going through these poems. I could probably do well to learn a bit more about history, but I think a book like this should be able to stand on its own and be its own narrative without me knowing a lot of history beforehand.
This is especially true for the poems that were more info-dumps than poetry. Now, I'm not a poetry girl, so I'm not going to pretend I know what makes a poem Good or Bad. But sometimes it felt like I was just reading a collection of facts instead of a piece of creative writing. Honestly, there were times it seemed like McGrath cared more about proving how smart he was instead of creating a story.
I sound very critical, but I did truly enjoy the poems for the most part. Plus, the concept was really cool. It's just maybe not my thing.
Unfortunately, I'm neither a history nor a poetry girl, which puts me at a major disadvantage for this book. Don't get me wrong: I liked it. It was good, and McGrath clearly put in the effort. But a lot of it fell flat for me personally.
The subjects that he chose to be, for the lack of a better phrase, the main characters, was almost more interesting that some of the poems. It felt like the book would've benefitted from an intro paragraph telling me his thought process, because it's not like these were all big names in world (well, European and American, mostly) history. That's not a criticism, to be clear. Just an observation, and I'd love to know why some of these subjects were chosen. My favorite poems were often the ones with non-human speakers, as that was giving a unique spotlight on history. It just felt a little random.
On a similar note, I probably would've benefitted from reading a history textbook before going through these poems. I could probably do well to learn a bit more about history, but I think a book like this should be able to stand on its own and be its own narrative without me knowing a lot of history beforehand.
This is especially true for the poems that were more info-dumps than poetry. Now, I'm not a poetry girl, so I'm not going to pretend I know what makes a poem Good or Bad. But sometimes it felt like I was just reading a collection of facts instead of a piece of creative writing. Honestly, there were times it seemed like McGrath cared more about proving how smart he was instead of creating a story.
I sound very critical, but I did truly enjoy the poems for the most part. Plus, the concept was really cool. It's just maybe not my thing.
June 18, 2020
Reading this collection of poetry is like flipping through a scrapbook of notable 20th century markers—people, places, artifacts, events—that conjure the essence of the times. It cannot be comprehensive and should not be criticized for that. Others might quibble with McGrath’s choices, but so what? This represents a viable selection, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A few of my favorite years are Apollinaire (1908), Kafka (1924), Woody Guthrie: Rusty Bedspring Blues (1929), Matisse: Tahiti (1930), Guadalcanal (1942), Picasso (1973), Orson Welles: The Life (1985), Lee Atwater’s Apocalyptic Dream (1991), and Digital Clocks (1992). Warning: The last of these is a tear-jerker in which Jane, a great-grandmother confined to a retirement home, is visited by members of her family, who have brought her great-grandson Sam with them. As she holds him on her lap, she recalls a memory from her childhood of her escape in 1903 from a forest fire. “You could feel history crowding the room with its shadows,/history embodied in the child of a horse-drawn past/and the child of a technologically unimaginable future/. . . together in the only place we ever inhabit—the present tense,/the human instant. . . .”
August 5, 2021
I don’t really like to leave reviews because ultimately who cares, I don’t feel like anything I have to say could be relevant to those that don’t know me or my tastes; and I’d rather leave the space in these review sections to others.
that said, I feel compelled on so many levels to leave a note here for anyone that notices I read this book and considers reading it themselves, because it’s absolutely dogshit.
there is an incredible breadth and width of technique here in these verses, but to entirely ascribe them as a voice to so many different peoples is an insult to their lives and the history they took part in (which this collection claims to respect).
bullshit history channel shows give more deference to the flow of history this book claims to represent, and they mostly manage to do more justice to these people’s voices too.
don’t read the review sections here because they’re awful, but if you’ve made it this far you should also skip this!
that said, I feel compelled on so many levels to leave a note here for anyone that notices I read this book and considers reading it themselves, because it’s absolutely dogshit.
there is an incredible breadth and width of technique here in these verses, but to entirely ascribe them as a voice to so many different peoples is an insult to their lives and the history they took part in (which this collection claims to respect).
bullshit history channel shows give more deference to the flow of history this book claims to represent, and they mostly manage to do more justice to these people’s voices too.
don’t read the review sections here because they’re awful, but if you’ve made it this far you should also skip this!
July 31, 2023
This poetry collection is a real journey, and as someone who doesn't usually read a lot of poetry, I felt a little lost at times. On the one hand, the concept is intriguing, and some of the poems are well-executed. However, the quality, tone, and style vary wildly, making for a mixed experience. Some poems, like "Andy Warhol: Waterfall of Dollar Signs (1987)", are very abstract and difficult to connect, while others, like Frida Kahlo's poems and "Guernica (1937)", stand out for their intensity and emotion. The book is a dense compilation of historically significant poems, each resonating with McGrath's poetic writing and history. Overall, this book is both remarkable and inconsistent and probably goes a little over the top on Picasso.
May 4, 2020
Excellent
I'm ashamed to say, as a lover of poetry, I was unfamiliar with Campbell McGrath. Well I am familiar now and this poetry is excellent. A century of poems as different and encompassing as the century it encompasses. Absolutely spellbinding.
Whether or not you love poetry, you will appreciate the beauty of these verses. Each one diverse and distinct. I'd think I found my favorite then as I read on, I'd say "no, this one is my favorite" until at least half of them are my "favorites."
I highly recommend this treasure to one and all.
I'm ashamed to say, as a lover of poetry, I was unfamiliar with Campbell McGrath. Well I am familiar now and this poetry is excellent. A century of poems as different and encompassing as the century it encompasses. Absolutely spellbinding.
Whether or not you love poetry, you will appreciate the beauty of these verses. Each one diverse and distinct. I'd think I found my favorite then as I read on, I'd say "no, this one is my favorite" until at least half of them are my "favorites."
I highly recommend this treasure to one and all.
Read
August 2, 2022i cannot even fathom how a writer would come up with this massive undertaking, like honestly goals. some poems were breathtaking (such as the ones about Frida Kahlo and the one about Nelson Mandela), some were more wikipedia entry than poetry. Despite its reasonable length this is a hard book to get through simply because there's so much packed into each poem, you'll really want to sit with it to keep from glazing over (not that it's boring! just challenging)
July 11, 2023
A book to savor.
I particularly liked the Frida Kahlo poems, the chants to be specific.
The Berlin Wall poem was a rhythmic masterpiece. The Jobs vs. Gates poem still has me giggling. And calling Bob Dylan “half rattlesnake, half Rumi” is brilliant.
And I felt particularly blessed by the poem “The Raspberries (1974). McGrath speaks my heart at random times.
I particularly liked the Frida Kahlo poems, the chants to be specific.
The Berlin Wall poem was a rhythmic masterpiece. The Jobs vs. Gates poem still has me giggling. And calling Bob Dylan “half rattlesnake, half Rumi” is brilliant.
And I felt particularly blessed by the poem “The Raspberries (1974). McGrath speaks my heart at random times.
October 6, 2020
One poem for each year of the 20th century. Some well known authors/thespians,artists, others I had never heard of. Some were really great, particularly those of some great artists in history. Of course, others caused my eyes to roll in the back of my head. Not being a poetry reader, this was a good one to pick up.
October 9, 2017
En general me gustó mucho, es un buen concepto... Pero para mi se quedó muy vago, muy por encima dejando fuera poemas que también fueron importantes en el siglo XX!
January 2, 2018
Gimmicky. Lots of lists of words, shouting.
April 11, 2019
A very ambitious project: Write one poem for each year of the twentieth century.
August 9, 2019
Great fun. 'Martha' was exceptional.
March 24, 2021
A beautiful 20th century homage: very mechanical, manifesto-like, avant-garde, and highly wired-free-wheelinʼ like Bob Dylan. But is it too minimal; or is it too much Picasso and Mao?
December 29, 2022
I often have a difficult time navigating the dates and places of history but this was a uniquely wonderful way to explore the past, art, technology, war, and discovery.
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April 8, 2023read
May 22, 2023
The concept of one poem for each year was really cool. It was a different way to learn about familiar people and events without being bored out of your mind in a classroom setting.
May 1, 2016
This was excellent. Campbell McGrath shows such variation in style and subject, and it works so well. This is a collection that really shines if you have at least a foundational knowledge of the twentieth century, but even if you don't know every figure mentioned in here, it's a great impetus for learning more. I'm really looking forward to reading more of McGrath's poetry.
June 11, 2017
Every year has a poem dedicated to a person or event that is related to that year. There are several people who have many years devoted to them, Picasso and Mao have the best ones in my opinion. Their travels through the Twentieth Century and how they change with the times (and yes, Bob Dylan is a subject as well) and how the times change them are one of the themes of the book.
I don't know how the poetry biz considers these poems - though he has been awarded and recognized quite a bit for his collections. What I do know is that this is poetry that does have the ability to speak to anyone that thinks and feels and is open to learn about one man's take on the last century.
In fact, I would think this would be a great text for a high school history class, maybe even one of the best as it probably contains more truths than most.
I don't know how the poetry biz considers these poems - though he has been awarded and recognized quite a bit for his collections. What I do know is that this is poetry that does have the ability to speak to anyone that thinks and feels and is open to learn about one man's take on the last century.
In fact, I would think this would be a great text for a high school history class, maybe even one of the best as it probably contains more truths than most.
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