Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three - by Jerome Rothenberg & Jeffrey C Robinson (Paperback)

About the Book

Rothenberg and Robinson bring a radically new interpretation to the poetry of the 19th century, viewing the work of the romantic and post-romantic poets as an international, collective, often utopian enterprise that became the foundation of experimental modernism.

Book Synopsis

The previous two volumes of this acclaimed anthology set forth a globally decentered revision of twentieth-century poetry from the perspective of its many avant-gardes. Now editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson bring a radically new interpretation to the poetry of the preceding century, viewing the work of the romantic and post-romantic poets as an international, collective, often utopian enterprise that became the foundation of experimental modernism. Global in its range, volume three gathers selections from the poetry and manifestos of canonical poets, as well as the work of lesser-known but equally radical poets. Defining romanticism as experimental and visionary, Rothenberg and Robinson feature prose poetry, verbal-visual experiments, and sound poetry, along with more familiar forms seen here as if for the first time. The anthology also explores romanticism outside the European orbit and includes ethnopoetic and archaeological works outside the literary mainstream. The range of volume three and its skewing of the traditional canon illuminate the process by which romantics and post- romantics challenged nineteenth-century orthodoxies and propelled poetry to the experiments of a later modernism and avant-gardism.

From the Back Cover

"It would be impossible to overstate the wonders of this masterpiece of radical humanism. Expansive erudition, fundamental sensitivity, passionate intelligence, concern, adventurousness, and love inform this volume's structure and its substance. Rothenberg and Robinson have dedicated this project to an intensification and expansion of the vital and vivacious contexts of the ongoing project of human thought. They present us not with the fixity of a canon but with the unfixity of our world. The brooding of Romanticism will continue to burst around us. This wide-ranging, decentering, global panoply is a work of genius--the editors' and ours."--Lyn Hejinian, author of The Language of Inquiry

"Compendious, capacious, global in scope, this third volume of Poems for the Millennium--as the editors put it, a 'prequel' to the two existing volumes--is a treasure; its commentaries offer a severe delight."--Esther Schor, author of Emma Lazarus

"This volume of Poems for the Millennium is every bit as challenging, unsettling, and surprising as its predecessors. It provokes us to take a fresh look at the achievements of nineteenth-century poets and of modernists often assumed to have defined themselves mainly by refusing and rejecting what came before. We have much to learn from this book about the diversity of ways in which poetry has found forms for responding to the world of which it is a part."--William Keach, author of Arbitrary Power: Romanticism, Language, Politics

"The romantic vision is one of extension and renewal--of poetry's signifying capacity in the immediate, human realm and that of the spirit. This provocative third volume of Poems for the Millennium is itself an instance of that romantic vision, definitively reframing and expanding our understanding of the movement."--Michael Palmer, author of Company of Moths

"Modernism rejected romanticism in the way that one political party rejects another--not because it is so different but because it wishes to win the same audience. This book demonstrates that the crucial thing that happened in modernism was that a door opened onto still another aspect of the immense cultural experiment that romanticism was--or, as Rothenberg and Robinson might insist, that romanticisms were (are).To know the work so carefully, lovingly, and brilliantly assembled in this book is to know ourselves in a new and newly conscious way."--Jack Foley, author of The Dancer and the Dance: A Book of Distinctions

Review Quotes

"A fascinating book that's bound to be controversial."-- "Harriet (Poetry Foundation Blog)" (6/16/2009 12:00:00 AM)

"A monumental achievement."--Harry Polkinorn "North County Times" (3/1/2009 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet and Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Jeffrey C. Robinson is Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.