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The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry

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A new edition of the acclaimed anthology―the most comprehensive collection of twentieth-century poetry in English available. "The most acute rendering of an era's sensibility is its poetry," wrote the editors in their preface to the first edition. Thirty years later, this thorough and sensitive revision freshly renders the remarkable range of styles, subjects, and voices in English-language poetry, from Walt Whitman and Thomas Hardy in the late nineteenth century to Carol Ann Duffy and Sherman Alexie in the twenty-first century.

With 195 poets and 1,596 poems, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry richly represents the major figures―Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Hughes, Olson, Bishop, Larkin, Plath, Rich, Heaney, and Walcott, among others. It also gives full voice to postcolonial and transnational poets, ethnic American poetries, experimental traditions, and the long poem. Each volume concludes with a Poetics section that provides essential contexts for reading the poems.

With substantially new introductions, headnotes, annotations, and bibliographies by the award-winning scholar and teacher Jahan Ramazani, this anthology is indispensable for all who love poetry. Two volumes, slipcased.

1136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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Jahan Ramazani

23 books5 followers

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5 stars
140 (45%)
4 stars
119 (38%)
3 stars
42 (13%)
2 stars
7 (2%)
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Profile Image for Jesse.
Author 4 books9 followers
September 11, 2014
I think I read half this book in one night on cocaine in an OK Motor Inn. I'll never do that again. But there's no reason to keep you from doing it better. It's a pricy book, about $100, and closer to five weeknights put together. Caveat Emptor!
Profile Image for Caitlin.
78 reviews
January 14, 2009
This is a truly wonderful anthology-- Nortons are the best. I got this for a class last semester and kept it. It is a two volume set, with one volume of modern poetry (from late 1800's to 1980's) and one volume of contemporary poetry (from 1940's to present). I know the dates overlap, but 'modern' and 'contemporary' are two different poetic idioms that overlapped quite a bit in transition. Modern poetry-- think Ezra Pound, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Butler Yeats. Contemporary-- think Gwendolyn Brooks, W. S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath. Some especially good things about this anthology are the sheer number of poets represented, the section of poetics (writings about poetry by poets), and the thoughtful and enlightening biographical material (much better than in most anthologies).
Profile Image for Aimee.
90 reviews8 followers
March 7, 2020
I'm not actually "finished" with this, but I keep it handy and flip through it regularly and I love it.
Profile Image for Matthew.
Author 8 books56 followers
July 9, 2012
Anthologies are mostly worthless (unless edited by Rothenberg and in a few other cases). I chose this one for my poetry lit course mostly for the price of a new edition and availability of used editions, but also because it includes decent selections of Loy, Riding, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Duncan, Brathwaite, Lorde, Hejinian, and Susan Howe, to go along with the predictable standards. Also, I like the prose excerpts at the back. I'd like to use something more daring, such as Revolution of the Word or volume one of Poems for the Millennium, but for an intro class I'm going to ease in with this one. I tried the Oxford and other anthologies in my intro to creative writing classes, but they all seem more politically-motivated than this one--as far as the less daring, large-print run anthologies go.
Profile Image for Victoria.
134 reviews16 followers
March 20, 2012
I'd recommend it as a must for any poetry lover's bookshelf. It starts with a selection of Walt Whitman and traverses through many greats of English and American modern literature and is nicely balanced with postcolonial and feminist contributions as well. I found lots of poets I knew and loved (Eliot, Yeats, Thomas, cummings, Hughes, Dickinson, Plath) and found a few new ones I'd never read before and loved (Roethke, Crane, Graves).

There are 2000-odd pages across two volumes and it's only about $50-60 on Amazon. Definitely worth the investment! My favourite book purchase I've made in ages.
654 reviews62 followers
February 27, 2008
I'm not usually taken with Norton anthologies. They have too many footnotes and the biographical information they provide tends to be on the boring side. But I love this anthology. My only qualm with it is that it features William Carlos Williams, but does not include his poem "This is Just to Say." However, I can't think of another anthology that has both "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas and Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." It's an excellent mix of the old and the new.
Profile Image for Kate.
319 reviews
October 18, 2007
Read this in English 50 taught by Professor Bill Cook. We studied: Dickinson, Whitman, Hardy, Hopkins, Yeats, Kipling, Masters, Sandburg, Millay, Stein, Cummings, Robinson, Frost, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Owen, Eberhart, Jarrell, Lawrence, Jeffers, Williams, H.D., Pound, Crane, Harper, Dunbar, Spencer, McKay, Toomer, Hughes, Cullen, Moore, Bogan, Bishop, W. Stevens, Eliot, Auden, Larkin, Roethke, Thomas, Rukeyser, Levertov, Plath, Rich, Lowell, Berryman, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Hayden, Brooks, Randall, Baraka.
Profile Image for Xio.
256 reviews1 follower
May 9, 2007
I haven't looked that hard but the contempory poetry hasn't interested me at all. But the modern collection is good for those who are trying to travel light while retaining access to a variety of poetic voices.
Profile Image for Melissa Rudder.
175 reviews260 followers
May 9, 2008
A good selection as far as I could tell. The footnotes are unobtrusive yet informative. I found the author biographies and introductory essays I read to be well-written and much more interesting than I'm accustomed to finding in these anthologies.
Profile Image for Timothy .
38 reviews
January 29, 2009
The text for 20th Century American Poetry at UR. Physically, my Volume One is not looking too well: B+ = beating up book.

Volume Two wasn't discussed until the last week or two of class but I've read a number of these poets, as suggested by Tomaz. Trying to devour it during this summer.

Profile Image for Janaree Nore.
4 reviews2 followers
May 16, 2007
I still have my college copy given to me by my great friend, Pam Lah. We would read these poems aloud sitting on new spring grass outside our dorm.
Profile Image for Allison.
1 review2 followers
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January 5, 2010
for class.. but ive really come to appreciate the massive amount of footnotes
4 reviews
October 24, 2007
This a compendium of poems from some of the greatest authours from the 20th century. Great book! Comes in a set of two books one is modern the other is contemporary.
53 reviews
Want to read
May 13, 2009
This is a really good collection of works. I have been reading the usual Great Poets and was looking for something more contemporary. This works! Right now I'm reading the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Profile Image for Lisa.
Author 3 books9 followers
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February 21, 2012
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Third Edition by Richard Ellman (2003)
Profile Image for Victoria.
94 reviews2 followers
February 10, 2013
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my anthology of modern poetry!! All of the great classics in one stop. Beautiful!
103 reviews
August 20, 2010
Fantastic collection of poetry and essays from the modern and contemporary eras.
Profile Image for Brady.
69 reviews1 follower
March 24, 2011
Really impressive packaging, great poems, good commentary.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews

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