American Hybrid – A Norton Anthology of New Poetry

... you'll only find a little of that here. There might be redemption, if these largely unvivid and unemotional writings—there are exceptions, including, notably, Albert Goldbarth—were sonically fine or superficially adept. But so many here are inert and torpid. Poetry is too all or nothing for such feeble gestures, as these mostly are. Was reading Anne Sexton earlier today. How fine she is, how lost now seem the skills of those who feel and sense, and know how to speak what they sense and feel. So much here is like the literature of some flat earth, where everything has been leveled into mere spacing and punctuation, exercises in caution and deliberation. Everything is studied. Poetry is not about words, but about cleaning the glass so perfectly that we can see something otherwise invisible, to gild our sadness, and locate the mortality in gladness. We need a poetry that measures up to the seriousness of life.

The world of poetry is wide and varied. This anthology fills in the gaps of what I grew up reading and loving and what is known as the Postmodern world of poetry. Both the Hybrid and Postmodern anthologies show that poetry is alive and healthy. Not everything is to my taste but there is so much to chose from to make poetry something special.

Fantastic book. Informative and offers a great deal of variety.

We're using this book in my writing group for the next year. Finding it very useful as a way to open new pathways in our writing poetry.

American Hybrid:A Norton Anthology of New Poetry: Poems all seem too similar, written to satisfy a critieria ---in this cas "Hybrid" , felt truly uninvolved and rambling.