Postmodern American Poetry


Postmodern American Poetry is a poetry anthology edited by Paul Hoover and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1994. A substantially revised second edition in 2013 removed some poets and added many others, incorporating additional American poetry movements which came to prominence in the 21st century.
The 1994 edition includes poetry published over the previous forty years. It consists of 411 poems by 103 poets. It also includes short essays on poetics by 18 authors, including some who also have poetry in the book. The introduction traces the term postmodern to an early mention by Charles Olson. Hoover defines postmodern poetry as written after 1945, taking an experimental approach, and setting itself in opposition to or outside the mainstream.
The anthology was mainly designed for classroom use, and was intended to be read alongside Norton's mainstream poetry anthology. Its goal was to "fully represent the movements of American avant-garde poetry", including representatives from the Beat and New York School poets, the Projectivists, "deep image" poets, language and performance poetry, and various experimentalists.
The first edition is sometimes compared with two other collections on "the other tradition" of poetry published at the same time: From the Other Side of the Century: "A New American Poetry, 1960-1990" and American Poetry Since 1950.
The second edition, published in 2013, has 557 poems by 114 poets. It adds works associated with Newlipo, conceptual poetry, and cyberpoetry/Flarf. It has been favourably compared to Rita Dove's 2011 Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry.

Poets in '' American Poetry'' (1994 edition)

Authors of essays on poetics in the volume (1994 edition)