The Penguin Book of American Verse

by Geoffrey Moore

This classic anthology of American poetry opens in the colonial seventeenth century and closes in the twentieth, emphasizing the extraordinary, vital period that followed the 1950s. Geoffrey Moore's skilled and unobtrusive editorship is careful not to neglect the major figures of the between-wars period, nor the ballads and parodies that can be said to represent the spirit of America. From Anne Bradstreet to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from William Carlos Williams to Walt Whitman and Ai, the work in "The Penguin Book of American Verse" displays a poetical spectrum of moods, rhythms, objectives and philosophy as diverse and fascinating as the nation from which it springs.

Genres: Poetry, American, The United States Of America

613 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. If you like reading poetry, I would thoroughly recommend this collection

[Gavin Lightfoot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great poetry, some awful, but I've discovered a number of new, to me, poets to explore.

[Lau Saili · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up as a core text first year university 20th Century Literature and am unafraid to say it is my literary Bible. I have never stopped reading it. There is always a new voice to discover or insight or inspiration to be had.

At the time I was so sick of classical poetry, especially English; the Americans in the 20th century were such a breath of fresh air.

I often simply open it up at random and read. William Carlos Williams and all who followed, particularly the Beat Poets and similar are perennial favourites.

[Joe Avary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not a student of poetry by any means, so this collection presented a chronological overview of American poetry as seen through the eyes of a British curmudgeon.

The blurb on the cover says “a very useful book” and it was useful, for helping me realize that the bulk of poetry from writers born from 1600-1900 is pretty much unreadable.

But it gets better and better as the book goes on which, I guess gives me hope in some sort of way. Like, the past wasn’t always that great.

[BookLovingLady (deceased Jan. 25, 2023...) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never read my poetry books from cover to cover, I just keep picking out bits and pieces... It's an ongoing process.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally speaking, I'm a front-to-back reader, in the sense that I start on the first page (or in the case of a long-winded introduction, the first *real* page of a work) and proceed until the last page of prose. It's not difficult to do when regarding a work of fiction like a novel or a non-fiction book. Most of those have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Anthologies, though, be they of prose or verse, are a bit more ambiguous. Do you start at the very beginning and read everything in order of its appearance? Do you take the "choose your own adventure" approach of skipping around, going back and picking up stuff that you ignored at first? Or do you just do the picky-eater approach, focusing on only the things you know you'll like, or material from authors whose work is unfamiliar to you?

In the case of "The Penguin Book of American Verse," edited by Geoffrey Moore, I decided to abandon my "beginning to end" approach and simply skip almost half the way through the collection. Why? Not because the poems and authors from the first fee centuries of American poetry are bad; they're just very familiar. I've read Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson before; none of the poems from them included here are ones that I wasn't at least passingly familiar with. So I jumped straight into the middle of the nineteenth century, and picked and chose from there.

That means I did read Gwendolyn Brooks but I skipped Charles Bukowski, among others. I will say that I appreciate the (bare minimum) diversity of some of the poets selected. Langston Hughes gets some play here, as do the Beats and others. But it's a very white-male collection, in keeping with notions that are outdated today.

So technically, I didn't *complete* this book, I just moved the parts of the literary salad that I didn't care for or had already sampled in order to get to the ingredients and morsels I was unfamiliar with. But I think that's allowed with poetry collections, or short-story anthologies, or essay collections. This is a fine primer for anyone looking to expand their knowledge of American poetry, but don't just stop at this one. Consider following it up, for example, with the collection of Black poetry that poetry Kevin Young compiled for the Library of America (I read it last year, one of my favorite books from that year).

[connie]

i love to cheat

[Heather Dunnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I definitely waned in and out of this at various points but on the whole I think it's a fair construction of the country. There's still some weird choices, like the inclusion of the entirety of Song of Myself and some other longer works because although when you're looking at canonisation of a nation they're necessary inclusions I don't think any work that can stand on its own right belongs in an anthology and could have allowed secondary poems for some poets instead.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is rather disturbing to read an anthology where the editor is so patronisingly unimpressed about the subject. Yeah yeah, we get it - the British are the bestest at literature, and the foolish Yanks are so adorable in their attempts to write poetry.

Mr Moore (ed.) would have been better off not venturing outside the University of Hull - it is surely a glorious world of words where pesky foreigners never venture

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