The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry

摘要

Having reviewed The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945 (Ashton, 2013) (RR 2014/178), my first concern in reviewing the present title was to distinguish it from its predecessor. In this instance, "modern" denotes the particular definition of literary modernism ranging, as Kalaidjian states in his introduction, from around 1890 to 1945. This title stretches that definition of "modern" to incorporate the evolution of American poetry up to the present day. This inclusiveness results in overlaps with the earlier title insofar as chapters across the two books share similar territories of interest, for example Chapter 7, Objectivist Poetry and Poetics in the "Modern" Companion, shares a focus with Chapter 2, From the Late Modernism of the "Objectivists" to the Proto-postmodernism of "Projective Verse" in the earlier Companion. The Companion to Modern American Poetry comprises 19 chapters, the earlier volume 15, and among these, I find eight chapters whose titles suggest the treatment of similar topics. The differences presented in the titles do reflect variations in the approaches taken towards each subject, for example the Psychotherapy and Confessional Poetry chapter in the Modem American Poetry companion in comparison with the title Confessional Poetry in the earlier volume. Furthermore, there is no overlap between contributing authors in the two titles, ensuring fresh material and, in most instances, reflecting completely different takes on the poetries under discussion.