American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry

This spirited anthology of contemporary American poetry focuses on the new poem--the hybrid--a synthesis of traditional and experimental styles.

As Cole Swensen argues in the introduction to this comprehensive new anthology, the long-acknowledged "fundamental division" between experimental and traditional is disappearing in American poetry in favor of hybrid approaches that blend trends from accessible lyricism to linguistic exploration. The focus in American Hybrid is on the blend; the more than seventy poets featured here--including Jorie Graham, Albert Goldbarth, and Lyn Hejinian--have found new and often unique ways to reconfigure the innumerable and sometimes conflicting voices of the past thirty years. The editors have crafted short introductory essays on each of the poets in the anthology, providing biographical backgrounds and positioning them within the current of contemporary poetry. This new anthology is essential reading for those who care about the present moment--and the future--of American verse. 3

Customer Reviews:

does what an anthology should do

By Music and Literature Garden - April 8, 2009

I seek the following qualities in a poetry anthology:

1. Introduces me to some poets and poems I have never read before: this anthology has a number of poets whose names I vaguely know but about whose work I know little to nothing. Since they are alongside other poets I do know better and already like, it gives me confidence in the quality of the work that the editors have chosen.
2. The anthology contains expository writing commenting on the place of the poems within the greater literary context: yes! There are two excellent essays by the editors at the beginning of the book.
3. Biographical information about each poet appears somewhere in the book: in fact, the bios introduce each poet's section of work, which is much better than having to constantly flip to an appendix.
4. The book is substantial but not so large that it won't fit in my handbag: this size is perfect. It's much smaller than those Norton anthologies I had to buy for undergrad English... read more

Experiment for Experiment's Sake

By Oscar Bermeo "Oscar Bermeo" - September 23, 2009

I only got through 2/3 of the book (has to go back to my local library) but what I did read was very mixed. My chief concern with this anthology is how it breaks down the tensions in United States Poetry to a "fundamental division" between narrative and experimental texts when all that is explored in this volume is the negotiation between variations in U.S. English non-linear narrative in contemporary academic poetry without putting any focus on hybrid texts outside of academia and/or explore the boundaries of English.

Many of the selections from the poets really only hint at the possibility of hybrid text as the samples rarely show a collision of the two coming together with only a few poets actually able to balance plain language and disrupted text in a single poem or even a few pages. Some of the poets who do show the best of all worlds in this collection include Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Palmer, John Yau and Harryette Mullen.

With a shaky premise to begin... read more

challenging and fantastic

By Isabel Archer - January 9, 2011

I was studying abroad in England, missing America a little bit, and I picked this up. Not only did it satisfy my homesickness, it made me aware of poets I had never heard of. I'm in undergraduate, young, and admittedly only mildly literate (on a good day) and trying to rectify said illiteracy. This book has been a great help. The content is challenging and fantastic, if you're willing to dive in without feeling like you understand completely what's going on around you. And rewarding to re-read.