The Oxford Book of American Verse: Chosen and with an Introd. by F. O. Matthiessen

A worthy companion to The Oxford Book of English Verse, this anthology covers, in 571 selections, the whole range of American poetry from colonial times; more than half of it is devoted to the best work of the period from 1900 to 1950. Fifty-one poets represented--deliberately fewer than in most anthologies, so that sufficient space can be devoted to each poet to afford a real understanding of his or her work. More recent and less well-known poets are represented wherever possible by works of some length rather than by a scattering of short poems. Brief biographical notes at the end enable the reader to know in what volume of the poet's work each poem originally appeared.