NP poetry resource

[Doug Millison]

Modern American Poetry: A Multimedia Companion to the _Anthology
of Modern American Poetry_ (Oxford University Press, 2000)
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/index.htm

This companion to the recent publication by Oxford University Press
of the _Anthology of Modern American Poetry_ edited by Cary Nelson
seeks to overcome the inherent limits to critical annotation in any
printed anthology by placing such material in cyberspace, where the
economic and physical limitations of paper don't apply. Designed to
be under perpetual construction, the Website currently includes
excerpts from interesting analyses of poems, biographical
information, relevant illustrations (such as book jackets,
broadsides, paintings, drawings, comics, and photographs),
manuscripts, drafts of poems, bibliographies, historical background,
statements on poetics, interviews, mini-essays on important issues
pertinent to a given poet, book reviews, archival resources, study
questions, and syllabi based around the anthology. Eventually the
site intends to offer, at minimum, a biography and bibliography for
every poet, but the primary materials currently on site are short
exegeses of poems or historical background information on selected
poems, particularly those from less well-known authors. In sum, while
this Website is not as exciting as it may one day be, it already
offers a far richer supplement to the anthology's poems than any
critical edition could. We recommend for particular attention the
short, full-length essay "No Histories but in Things: Robert Pinsky's
Rhizomatic X-Rays" by Roger Gilbert, analyzing Robert Pinsky's fine
poem "Shirt"; and the extensive archival material for Harry Crosby,
an early 20th-century avant-garde writer and precursor to the
LANGUAGE poets. The Website invites contributions of all sorts
relevant to the works featured in the printed anthology (note: this
Website does not contain the poems themselves). While the editorial
policy was not clear to us on our visit, we assume such contributions
are being solicited mainly from scholars and will be subjected to
editorial review. [DC]

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