The New American Poetry of Engagement - by Ann Keniston & Jeffrey Gray (Paperback)

About the Book

"This anthology offers a comprehensive look at contemporary American poetry, demonstrating that poets are moving at once toward a new engagement with public concerns and toward a focus on the problems of representation. A detailed introduction by the editors along with statements by many of the poets add depth and context to the book "--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

This anthology of poetry collects 21st century American works by both established and emerging poets that deal with the public events, government policies, ecological and political threats, economic uncertainties, and large-scale violence that have largely defined the century to date. But these 138 poems by 50 poets do not simply describe, lament, or bear witness to contemporary events; they also explore the linguistic, temporal, and imaginative problems involved in doing so. In this way, the anthology offers a comprehensive look at contemporary American poetry, demonstrating that poets are moving at once toward a new engagement with public concerns and toward a focus on the problems of representation. A detailed introduction by the editors along with poetics statements by many of the poets add depth and context to a book that will appeal to anyone interested in the state and evolution of contemporary American poetry.

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Review Quotes

"Highly recommended"-Choice; "This superb anthology of "engaged" poems, framed by the editors' seminal introduction, will help define the age. Challenging the easy opposition of political and personal, the collection includes all sorts of astounding, unsettling poems by poets ranging from Rae Armantrout to Frank Bidart, Galway Kinnell, Yusef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Claudia Rankine. This is the Hour of Lead, but the poems shimmer."-Steven Gould Axelrod, University of California, Riverside; "Ann Keniston and Jeffrey Gray have provided us with what may be the definitive representation of the 21st century's troubled first decade. This brilliant anthology insists on the importance of public poetry...a tradition revived after 9/11 and reinforced by subsequent economic, political and natural disasters. From differing aesthetic positions, the poets collected in The New American Poetry of Engagement witness the unimaginable, say the unspeakable."-Michael Davidson, University of California, San Diego.

About the Author

Ann Keniston is a professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. Jeffrey Gray is a professor of English at Seton Hall University. He lives in South Orange, New Jersey.