I'm using
The New American Poetry in my "Poetry Since 1945" class this semester, amongst others. But it's a far less interesting book than
The Young American Poets, ed. Paul Carroll (Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1968). In addition to the fascinating photos of all these folks as youngsters, it contains a (now-inconceivable) cross-section of US writers. Marvin Bell & Ted Berrigan. Kathleen Fraser next to Louise Gluck. Robert Hass and Robert Kelly. Charles Simic , Kathleen Spivack, Mark Strand, James Tate (well-groomed, overfed, button-down oxford shirt) in rapid succession; then, later, Julia Vinograd (Berkeley street character, when I was there), Diane Wakoski, and Anne Waldman (also looking mighty clean-cut). And lots of understandably unknowns as well as some whacky surprises. Anyway, it's always great to find a document of how things were, in any generation, before competing canonical scleroses impair aesthetic cognition, as they always do do, it seems.
