Waubonsee Community College

American hybrid, a Norton anthology of new poetry, edited by Cole Swensen and David St. John

eng

illustrations

index present

poetry

American hybrid

227016082

edited by Cole Swensen and David St. John

a Norton anthology of new poetry

This anthology of contemporary American poetry focuses on the new poem, the hybrid, a synthesis of traditional and experimental styles. As one of the editors argues in the introduction to this anthology, the long-acknowledged "fundamental division" between experimental and traditional is disappearing in American poetry in favor of hybrid approaches that blend trends from accessible lyricism to linguistic exploration. The focus of this work is on the blend; the more than seventy poets featured here, including Jorie Graham, Albert Goldbarth, and Lyn Hejinian, have found new and often unique ways to reconfigure the innumerable and sometimes conflicting voices of the past thirty years. The editors have crafted short introductory essays on each of the poets in the anthology, providing biographical backgrounds and positioning them within the current of contemporary poetry. This anthology is essential reading for those who care about the present moment and the future, of American verse