Book description
Michael Schmidt's anthology includes the work of more than a hundred
poets from every part of the English-speaking world. What links their
diverse voices is a common language: each poem, in its own way, adds
to the resources of the medium and makes it new.
The poems in this book are allowed to slip free of their moorings in
the biography and history of the last century to create new spaces and
times. They have been chosen because they are exceptional, profound
and unique in what they do to language, regardless of their subject
matter or the orientation of the poet. It is a powerful reminder that
in the twentieth century poems did what they have never done before,
and it provides us with a unique insight into the forces that will
shape the poetry of the twenty-first century.
Michael Schmidt
is a poet, critic, and translator. He edits the leading poetry journal
PN Review
, is the editorial director of the Carcanet Press and director, the
Writing Programme at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Professor
of Poetry at the University of Glasgow. He was born in Mexico in 1947,
and educated at Harvard and Oxford. His
Lives of the Poets
, a survey of English poetry from the fourteenth century to the present
day, 'distinguished him as among the most vigilant of critics' (
The Times
).
