Poems for the Millennium, Volume 2

From Postwar to Millennium

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Edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

University of California Press

Due/Published April 1998, 871 pages, paper

ISBN 0520208641

Poems for the Millennium is the first global anthology of twentieth-century poetry. Revolutionary in both its international scope and its innovative structure, this anthology brings together the poets and poetic movements that radically altered the ways that art and language express the human condition.

Review

Poetry anthologies can be tricky and problematic enterprises. Too small, and an anthology runs the risk of leaving too many poets/movements by the wayside. Too big, and a sense of focus escapes, leaving the reader feeling likes he's being underwhelmed by an archival ocean of a poem here and there, never leading up to anything. In the first volume of Poems for the Millennium, From Fin de Siècle to Negritude not only challenged the possibilities for what an anthology could do, but more importantly provided a wholly new way of looking at poetry of the twentieth century. This volume focuses in on the second part of the century and thus after including some of the modernist forefathers (Pound, Williams, Stevens, H.D., etc.) Volume two includes the most interesting and bold poetry by writers working after the war during the second "great awakening" of experimental poetry in this century. Rothenberg and Joris have organized the work both chronologically and have interspersed it with groupings of movements from around the world. (Indeed, the international scope of this anthology is one of its more extraordinary qualities) In addition, an extended section is devoted to examples of the "art of the manifesto" and two smaller groupings of traditional "oral poets" and of experimenters with machine art and cyberpoetics. Needless to say, there is a lot to digest in this anthology, (all of it compelling) yet the common interest in finding creative and bold ways to use poetry and language makes reading Poems for the Millennium a consistently rewarding experience as well as being an indispensable volume for all those interested in twentieth century poetry. Mary Ann Caws writes, "A standing ovation, please, for an epic performance of an heroic breath and breadth. Superb in its being and its translations, the language leaps headlong from the pages into your space. After the invaluable first volume, this one celebrates a poetry and poetics wide awake to right now and full of sustenance: an event for the millennium."