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The FSG Poetry Anthology
To honor FSG's 75th anniversary, here is a unique anthology celebrating the riches and variety of its poetry list--past, present, and future
Poetry has been at the heart of Farrar, Straus and Giroux's identity ever since Robert Giroux joined the fledgling company in the mid-1950s, soon bringing T. S. Eliot, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop onto the list. These extraordinary poets and their successors have been essential in helping define FSG as a publishing house with a unique place in American letters.
The FSG Poetry Anthology includes work by almost all of the more than one hundred twenty-five poets whom FSG has published in its seventy-five-year history. Giroux's first generation was augmented by a group of international figures (and Nobel laureates), including Pablo Neruda, Nelly Sachs, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Joseph Brodsky. Over time the list expanded to includes poets as diverse as Yehuda Amichai, John Ashbery, Frank Bidart, Louise Gl�ck, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Paul Muldoon, Les Murray, Grace Paley, Carl Phillips, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, James Schuyler, C. K. Williams, Charles Wright, James Wright, and Adam Zagajewski.
Today, Henri Cole, francine j. harris, Ishion Hutchinson, Maureen N. McLane, Ange Mlinko, Valzhyna Mort, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Frederick Seidel are among the poets who are continuing FSG's tradition as a discoverer and promoter of the most vital and distinguished contemporary voices.
This anthology is a wide-ranging showcase of some of the best poems published in America over the past three generations. It is also a sounding of poetry's present and future.
Poetry has been at the heart of Farrar, Straus and Giroux's identity ever since Robert Giroux joined the fledgling company in the mid-1950s, soon bringing T. S. Eliot, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop onto the list. These extraordinary poets and their successors have been essential in helping define FSG as a publishing house with a unique place in American letters.
The FSG Poetry Anthology includes work by almost all of the more than one hundred twenty-five poets whom FSG has published in its seventy-five-year history. Giroux's first generation was augmented by a group of international figures (and Nobel laureates), including Pablo Neruda, Nelly Sachs, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Joseph Brodsky. Over time the list expanded to includes poets as diverse as Yehuda Amichai, John Ashbery, Frank Bidart, Louise Gl�ck, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Paul Muldoon, Les Murray, Grace Paley, Carl Phillips, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, James Schuyler, C. K. Williams, Charles Wright, James Wright, and Adam Zagajewski.
Today, Henri Cole, francine j. harris, Ishion Hutchinson, Maureen N. McLane, Ange Mlinko, Valzhyna Mort, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Frederick Seidel are among the poets who are continuing FSG's tradition as a discoverer and promoter of the most vital and distinguished contemporary voices.
This anthology is a wide-ranging showcase of some of the best poems published in America over the past three generations. It is also a sounding of poetry's present and future.
- GenresPoetryAnthologies
416 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 2021
21 people are currently reading
152 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Galassi
33 books25 followersJonathan Galassi born 1949 in Seattle, Washington, is the President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, one of the eight major publishers in New York. He began his publishing career at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, moved to Random House in New York, and finally, to Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He joined FSG as executive editor in 1985, after being fired from Random House. Two years later, he was named editor-in-chief, and is now President and Publisher.
Galassi is also a translator of poetry and a poet himself. He has translated and published the poetic works of the Italian poets Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale. His honors as a poet include a 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship, and his activities include having been poetry editor for The Paris Review for ten years, and being an honorary chairman of the Academy of American Poets. He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, The Nation and the Poetry Foundation website.
Galassi graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy where he became interested in poetry, writing and literature, and from Harvard College in 1971. He was a Marshall Scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge. He realized while attending Christ’s College that he wanted a career in book publishing. Galassi was born in Seattle (his father worked as an attorney for the Justice Department), but he grew up in Plympton, Massachusetts. He lives in Brooklyn.
Galassi is also a translator of poetry and a poet himself. He has translated and published the poetic works of the Italian poets Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale. His honors as a poet include a 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship, and his activities include having been poetry editor for The Paris Review for ten years, and being an honorary chairman of the Academy of American Poets. He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, The Nation and the Poetry Foundation website.
Galassi graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy where he became interested in poetry, writing and literature, and from Harvard College in 1971. He was a Marshall Scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge. He realized while attending Christ’s College that he wanted a career in book publishing. Galassi was born in Seattle (his father worked as an attorney for the Justice Department), but he grew up in Plympton, Massachusetts. He lives in Brooklyn.
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April 15, 2023
National Poetry Month is a great opportunity to discover new poets and anthologies are a wonderful avenue to do so. Poetry has always been an important part of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), a wonderful publisher known for their international collection of authors. Begun in 1946, FSG has boasted a highly decorated list of writers with 25 of them having been Nobel Prize recipients. The FSG Poetry Anthology chronicles the over 120 poets they’ve brought to the world, organizing the collection by decade and for their poem selection ‘we’ve tried to select work that is perhaps less familiar yet nevertheless characteristic of the writer: renewed discoveries to hold up to the light again.’ No doubt their repertoire of poets is impressive, with many notables found in this volume such as Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, C.K. Williams, Derek Walcott, Frank Bidart, Grace Paley, Elizabeth Bishop, Adam Zagajewski, John Ashbery, Pablo Neruda and many, many more. It is a wonderful colelction that offers a snapshot of the publisher and an excellent assortment of poems to touch your heart, mind and soul.
Love
- Daniel Nadler
Love,
the skeleton of a ship on the seabed
takes water as its flesh
and maybe schools of fish
as momentary sails. A single pearl
lost to a current
can become to it
a navigable star.
Just yesterday I wrote a review for another anthology (read it here) and discussed the ideas around what is poetry and found this volume also includes a lot of poetry addressing the question. I was delighted by this one, which was published with the quote by James Schuyler: ‘I hate Christmas / but I hate people who hate / Christmas even more,’ and I felt it certainly adds a valuable perspective on the conversation. Take a look:
What Was Poetry?
-John Koethe
No one really knew, though everyone knew what it should be;
And now it's just a way of being famous on a small scale.
It was supposed to be significant for its own sake,
Though that was never entirely true: human feelings
Got in the way, for while it was possible to remain unmoved
In the face of all that language, no one really wanted to:
They wanted to talk about it, to explain what it had let them see,
As though the world were incomplete before poetry filled it in.
And now there's nothing left to see: oh, poems come and go
And everyone complains about them, but, where there used to be
Arguments there's just appreciation and indifference,
Measured praise that's followed by forgetting. I'm as bad
As anyone: instead of reading I reread, instead of seeing
I remember, and instead of letting silence have its say
I fill it up with talk, as if the last word might be anything else.
And yet despite all this it matters. Sometimes in the midst
Of this long preparation for death that initial solitude returns
And the world seems actual and alive, as it assumes its opposite.
I think the truest thoughts are always second thoughts,
But who am I kidding, other than myself? I hope there's
Someone, that it casts its spell beyond the small cone of light
Hovering over my desk, and that what started out one night
So long ago in silence doesn't end that way. I fantasize
I can hear it somewhere in the realm of possibility,
But only now and then, in intervals between breaths.
I love this. ‘And yet despite all this it matter.’ I always loved the way Roberto Bolaño addressed art as something that was the most important aspect of life and celebrating artistic communities while also lampooning them. For him, it sometimes seems that art matters because it almost doesn’t and that it is our love for it, the ways it keeps us going in hard times, that does make it matter. ‘Only poetry isn’t shit,’ he wrote. This is a lovely collection because it reminds us that poetry isn’t shit, that poetry can matter, that poetry can reach inside us and make our very essence of being dance to its rhythms and be moved or marred by its words. Poetry captures life in the abstract, makes a single moment into an epic, bestows our thoughts, fears, loves, hopes and dreams into a carefully chosen package of words and transmits them to the world, often lasting longer than the poets themselves. Poetry feels like a path to immortality, like a rallying cry, like a soothing hug, like a voice that could echo through the cosmos or barely be heard in a silent room. Poetry is a landscape I love to live in, forever changing.
Afternoons and Early Evenings
-Louise Glück
The beautiful golden days when you were soon to be dying
but could still enter into random conversations with strangers,
random but also deliberate, so impressions of the world
were still forming and changing you,
and the city was at its most radiant, uncrowded in summer
though by then everything was happening more slowly
boutiques, restaurants, a little wine shop with a striped awning,
once a cat was sleeping in the doorway;
it was cool there, in the shadows, and I thought
I would like to sleep like that again, to have in my mind
not one thought. And later we would eat polpo and saganaki,
the waiter cutting leaves of oregano into a saucer of oil-
What was it, six o'clock? So when we left it was still light
and everything could be seen for what it was,
and then you got in the car-
Where did you go next, after those days,
where although you could not speak you were not lost?
This is a lovely collection and the assortment of poets is fantastic. It really draws from a variety of cultures and places and captures 75 years of excellent works, carefully sorted into this collection. Now the last anthology I just reviewed did have such a phenomenal introduction and page layout that I preferred (as well as more poems) but this one is also a valuable collection. I would have liked to learn a bit more about the publisher though. Yet, for an anthology of poems where the only theme is the publisher, this is quite well done. FSG has done great work and this anthology is a moving testament to it.
Love
- Daniel Nadler
Love,
the skeleton of a ship on the seabed
takes water as its flesh
and maybe schools of fish
as momentary sails. A single pearl
lost to a current
can become to it
a navigable star.
Just yesterday I wrote a review for another anthology (read it here) and discussed the ideas around what is poetry and found this volume also includes a lot of poetry addressing the question. I was delighted by this one, which was published with the quote by James Schuyler: ‘I hate Christmas / but I hate people who hate / Christmas even more,’ and I felt it certainly adds a valuable perspective on the conversation. Take a look:
What Was Poetry?
-John Koethe
No one really knew, though everyone knew what it should be;
And now it's just a way of being famous on a small scale.
It was supposed to be significant for its own sake,
Though that was never entirely true: human feelings
Got in the way, for while it was possible to remain unmoved
In the face of all that language, no one really wanted to:
They wanted to talk about it, to explain what it had let them see,
As though the world were incomplete before poetry filled it in.
And now there's nothing left to see: oh, poems come and go
And everyone complains about them, but, where there used to be
Arguments there's just appreciation and indifference,
Measured praise that's followed by forgetting. I'm as bad
As anyone: instead of reading I reread, instead of seeing
I remember, and instead of letting silence have its say
I fill it up with talk, as if the last word might be anything else.
And yet despite all this it matters. Sometimes in the midst
Of this long preparation for death that initial solitude returns
And the world seems actual and alive, as it assumes its opposite.
I think the truest thoughts are always second thoughts,
But who am I kidding, other than myself? I hope there's
Someone, that it casts its spell beyond the small cone of light
Hovering over my desk, and that what started out one night
So long ago in silence doesn't end that way. I fantasize
I can hear it somewhere in the realm of possibility,
But only now and then, in intervals between breaths.
I love this. ‘And yet despite all this it matter.’ I always loved the way Roberto Bolaño addressed art as something that was the most important aspect of life and celebrating artistic communities while also lampooning them. For him, it sometimes seems that art matters because it almost doesn’t and that it is our love for it, the ways it keeps us going in hard times, that does make it matter. ‘Only poetry isn’t shit,’ he wrote. This is a lovely collection because it reminds us that poetry isn’t shit, that poetry can matter, that poetry can reach inside us and make our very essence of being dance to its rhythms and be moved or marred by its words. Poetry captures life in the abstract, makes a single moment into an epic, bestows our thoughts, fears, loves, hopes and dreams into a carefully chosen package of words and transmits them to the world, often lasting longer than the poets themselves. Poetry feels like a path to immortality, like a rallying cry, like a soothing hug, like a voice that could echo through the cosmos or barely be heard in a silent room. Poetry is a landscape I love to live in, forever changing.
Afternoons and Early Evenings
-Louise Glück
The beautiful golden days when you were soon to be dying
but could still enter into random conversations with strangers,
random but also deliberate, so impressions of the world
were still forming and changing you,
and the city was at its most radiant, uncrowded in summer
though by then everything was happening more slowly
boutiques, restaurants, a little wine shop with a striped awning,
once a cat was sleeping in the doorway;
it was cool there, in the shadows, and I thought
I would like to sleep like that again, to have in my mind
not one thought. And later we would eat polpo and saganaki,
the waiter cutting leaves of oregano into a saucer of oil-
What was it, six o'clock? So when we left it was still light
and everything could be seen for what it was,
and then you got in the car-
Where did you go next, after those days,
where although you could not speak you were not lost?
This is a lovely collection and the assortment of poets is fantastic. It really draws from a variety of cultures and places and captures 75 years of excellent works, carefully sorted into this collection. Now the last anthology I just reviewed did have such a phenomenal introduction and page layout that I preferred (as well as more poems) but this one is also a valuable collection. I would have liked to learn a bit more about the publisher though. Yet, for an anthology of poems where the only theme is the publisher, this is quite well done. FSG has done great work and this anthology is a moving testament to it.
October 10, 2021
Sometimes your tone
transforms us for a moment,
we believe - truly -
that every day is sacred,
that poetry - how to put it? -
makes life rounder,
fuller, prouder, unashamed
of perfect formulation.
- Adam Zagajewski, "Reading Milosz"
(Trans. Clare Cavanagh)
***
Dialogues fade out,
they are made of thought,
repeated by an echo.
A silence is invoked,
fingers on a windowpane,
a step taken between tables.
Since one is benevolent,
one says song and light.
- Marie Étienne, "King of a Hundred Horsemen"
(Trans. Marilyn Hacker)
***
And don't we live a parallel life in thought,
an attentiveness not unlike
a natural prayer of the mind and not-mind?
The shadow cast between them.
Where an unlight burns.
Karen Solie, "Affirmations"
***
...I hope there's
Someone, that it cast its spell
beyond the small cone of light
Hovering over my desk, and that
what started out one night
So long ago in silence doesn't end
that way. I fantasize
I can hear it somewhere in the realm
of possibility,
But only now and then, in intervals
between breaths.
- John Koethe, " What Was Poetry?"
Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC of this splendid anthology consisting of a constellation of brilliant poets.
And thanks to my Goodreads friends for introducing me to NetGalley!
transforms us for a moment,
we believe - truly -
that every day is sacred,
that poetry - how to put it? -
makes life rounder,
fuller, prouder, unashamed
of perfect formulation.
- Adam Zagajewski, "Reading Milosz"
(Trans. Clare Cavanagh)
***
Dialogues fade out,
they are made of thought,
repeated by an echo.
A silence is invoked,
fingers on a windowpane,
a step taken between tables.
Since one is benevolent,
one says song and light.
- Marie Étienne, "King of a Hundred Horsemen"
(Trans. Marilyn Hacker)
***
And don't we live a parallel life in thought,
an attentiveness not unlike
a natural prayer of the mind and not-mind?
The shadow cast between them.
Where an unlight burns.
Karen Solie, "Affirmations"
***
...I hope there's
Someone, that it cast its spell
beyond the small cone of light
Hovering over my desk, and that
what started out one night
So long ago in silence doesn't end
that way. I fantasize
I can hear it somewhere in the realm
of possibility,
But only now and then, in intervals
between breaths.
- John Koethe, " What Was Poetry?"
Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC of this splendid anthology consisting of a constellation of brilliant poets.
And thanks to my Goodreads friends for introducing me to NetGalley!
September 5, 2021
On the one hand, I did really enjoy some of these poems and there are certainly great poets in these pages. There's some diversity in not just race and gender but also language and style. That said, the introduction hit on one of the things I dislike so much about the established poetry community. It gleefully tells of how the friendships of the editors and poets led to their inclusions in the journal over the years, and to their friends in turn being welcomed into the fold. The published poetry community has always been a sort of snobbish private club. So many voices have been unwelcome until recently when the rise of Instagram poetry (heaven help us), small presses and other avenues have finally begun to open up poetry for readers and writers of all types. If you enjoy the "best" poets of the past near-century in terms of who got the most press and accolades in their own incestuous elite poetry circles, you will find them here. And they are good. But it is very much a look to a very selective group of pretty people, so to speak. It all felt a little old and done to me.
I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.
I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.
November 26, 2021
This poetry anthology highlights some of the best poets and poetry coming out of FSG over the last few decades. I found a few well-loved favorites of my own and a few names I didn't know but liked. Can you really ask anything more from an anthology? It is organized both chronologically but also in more subtle ways, connecting poems by theme or focus at times. Subtle but appreciated!
Some of my favorites:
We are Many by Pablo Neruda
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/we-ar...
Night by Louise Bogan
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
Crossroads by Louise Glück
https://medium.com/@mj1982m/crossroad...
A Winter Night by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Robertson
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/09/144904...
Dancer by Nelly Sachs, translated by Joshua Weiner
(And interestingly, I think this is a new translation, because I found one called "Ballerina" that has parallels but is not the same... use this anthology to read this version)
In broad dayliGht black moms look grieving by Roya Marsh
And this leads me to say that overall it is very western and very white and very male as one would expect in a retrospective. There are some small beacons of otherness and I did enjoy some of these translations (Mark Strand on Neruda for instance,) but let's hope they include more of the wide world of voices in the next set of decades!
I also took note of a few Russian poets I may want to read for my project next year - Joseph Brodsky, Aleksandr Kushner, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
I had a copy of this from the publisher through NetGalley.
Some of my favorites:
We are Many by Pablo Neruda
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/we-ar...
Night by Louise Bogan
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
Crossroads by Louise Glück
https://medium.com/@mj1982m/crossroad...
A Winter Night by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Robertson
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/09/144904...
Dancer by Nelly Sachs, translated by Joshua Weiner
(And interestingly, I think this is a new translation, because I found one called "Ballerina" that has parallels but is not the same... use this anthology to read this version)
In broad dayliGht black moms look grieving by Roya Marsh
And this leads me to say that overall it is very western and very white and very male as one would expect in a retrospective. There are some small beacons of otherness and I did enjoy some of these translations (Mark Strand on Neruda for instance,) but let's hope they include more of the wide world of voices in the next set of decades!
I also took note of a few Russian poets I may want to read for my project next year - Joseph Brodsky, Aleksandr Kushner, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
I had a copy of this from the publisher through NetGalley.
August 26, 2021
Poetry lovers, or those who want to explore poetry in the hopes of becoming one, mark your calendar for this book’s publication date. It is an incredibly generous and wide-ranging collection of poetry over the 75 years of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux’s history.
The book is organized by time periods. The first poems included are from the 1950s and they keep going from there, right up until the 2020s. There are so many wonderful poets in here that I cannot possibly name them all. Just a few from the first section of the book to give readers an idea; Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Randall Jarrell to name just some. By the time readers approach the 2020s, they can read works by Sylvie Baumgarten, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Spenser Resece and others. In between there are a cornucopia of choices.
I highly recommend this title. Get it for yourself or as a gift for someone you know. It is worth it.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.
The book is organized by time periods. The first poems included are from the 1950s and they keep going from there, right up until the 2020s. There are so many wonderful poets in here that I cannot possibly name them all. Just a few from the first section of the book to give readers an idea; Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Randall Jarrell to name just some. By the time readers approach the 2020s, they can read works by Sylvie Baumgarten, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Spenser Resece and others. In between there are a cornucopia of choices.
I highly recommend this title. Get it for yourself or as a gift for someone you know. It is worth it.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.
October 1, 2023
For every poem I loved and reread, there were 8-10 I didn't understand or didn't connect with.
January 8, 2022
This anthology includes a range of poetry from the publishing house of Farrah, Straus, and Giroux. I enjoyed old favorites and was introduced to poets I was not familiar with, so my poetic horizons were broadened. Still, many of the poems did not resonate with me which often means I need to read them again.
Here a couple of favorites:
LOUISE BOGAN
NIGHT
The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;
Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;
Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on unclouded nights,
The water reflects
The firmament's partial setting;
-O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart
Postscript
Seamus Heaney
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Here a couple of favorites:
LOUISE BOGAN
NIGHT
The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;
Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;
Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on unclouded nights,
The water reflects
The firmament's partial setting;
-O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart
Postscript
Seamus Heaney
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Read
September 1, 2022FSG (AKA Farrar Strauss & Giroux, currently owned by Macmillan, one of the big 5) has the most impressive track record when it comes to publishing poetry, as this anthology pub last fall proves. To celebrate their 75th anniversary, FSG released an anthology of poetry that they had previously published. The anthology is arranged by decade of publication, which makes for an interesting & lively reading experience. For example: Seamus Heaney's Beowulf is included in the 2000's section, while Maria Headley's lively colloquial rendering of Hrothgar's troubles is included in the final section. Certain poets are provided more room than others, for obvious reasons (several poems by recent Nobel winner Louise Glück or the recent centennial of John Berryman). One of the big surprises while reading this collection was reevaluating certain authors whose work had previously left me indifferent. To cite a few examples: I was incredibly moved by Lowell's Waking Early Sunday Morning, I also couldn't stop thinking about his work Skunk Hour. I found the works included by Paul Muldoon terrific, a poet that I never particularly cared for before. I was deeply, immensely affected by Larkin's Aubade. This anthology, while largely English language poetry, contains a generous portion of translated work (Paul Celan, Mahmoud Darwish, Tomas Transtromer immediately springs to mind). This is hands down one of the best poetry anthologies that I have recently read & I will certainly be purchasing a copy for my personal library.
October 23, 2021
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
The FSG Poetry Anthology presents poems and poets from the very beginning of Farrar, Straus and Giroux's publishing history, through to the present day. The anthology, arranged in a loose chronological order, celebrates the publisher's history of poetic achievement and charts its literary sensibilities across time.
This was a solid poetry anthology. I don't think every poem in any given anthology is for every reader, but I think every reader could easily find one, or two, or ten poems in this anthology that speak to them on that deeper level which compels all of us to turn back to poetry at some point in our lives.
As a reader who's mostly only had exposure to FSG's longer-form publications, it was interesting and refreshing to see how the publishing company's award-winning sensibilities translated into poetry. I certainly was not disappointed. From Grace Paley to Pablo Neruda to Elizabeth Bishop, the poets on the page were all of high caliber, and the scope of the collection left me wanting very little.
The FSG Poetry Anthology presents poems and poets from the very beginning of Farrar, Straus and Giroux's publishing history, through to the present day. The anthology, arranged in a loose chronological order, celebrates the publisher's history of poetic achievement and charts its literary sensibilities across time.
This was a solid poetry anthology. I don't think every poem in any given anthology is for every reader, but I think every reader could easily find one, or two, or ten poems in this anthology that speak to them on that deeper level which compels all of us to turn back to poetry at some point in our lives.
As a reader who's mostly only had exposure to FSG's longer-form publications, it was interesting and refreshing to see how the publishing company's award-winning sensibilities translated into poetry. I certainly was not disappointed. From Grace Paley to Pablo Neruda to Elizabeth Bishop, the poets on the page were all of high caliber, and the scope of the collection left me wanting very little.
February 11, 2025
So clearly presented by the decades in which FSG published these works, over its 75-year history as a publisher. Beautifully presented on cream-colored paper with plenty of space to appreciate the form of each work. Notes about each of the more than a hundred poets, which I appreciate as guides to which of their collections I might enjoy. Thoroughly indexed for finding specific authors, titles or first lines. I appreciate the attention to women’s as well as men’s works.
September 26, 2023
I read this lovely anthology a few poems at a time, so as to savor the experience. Some poems were familiar "greatest hits" of well-known poets, but others were more obscure and from poets not as widely read in the U.S. Just a fabulous collection.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
February 17, 2022
I wrote a review of this but it’s not displaying and I don’t have the patience to rewrite it.
June 12, 2022
Much of this collection did not feel fresh or impactful to me. I tried to savor these poems in several settings and they just weren't ringing my bell. :(
Abandoned.
Abandoned.
September 25, 2021
Founded in 1946, the small independent publishing house Farrar and Straus added literary editor Robert Giroux to their firm in 1955. He brought with him leading writers, especially poets, which elicited FSG’s identity as publishers of poetry. This collection marks FSG’s 75th anniversary to honor Robert Giroux and includes nearly all the poets they published from the 1950’s to present. What a treat.
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