From Some Reflections on The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry (2011)

I’ll just add that I’m devouring this anthology, but not at all as a scholar.  It feels curated, somewhat limited, like a guest list for a venue with limited capacity (and clearly no large budget for royalties, which remains a mystery.) Through it I’m happening upon old pals and their dear friends with whom I’ve yet to become acquainted, the pleasure of which outweighs the thought in the back of my head that we’re missing a few folks from the party.

Enjoyment aside: Helen Vendler is out of touch.  The fact that she arrived at a few ideas that aren’t entirely off base doesn’t mean she used a valid path to get to those ideas.  And this:

[T]here is a certain objectivity bestowed by the mere passage of time, and its sifting of wheat from chaff: Which of Dove’s 175 poets will have staying power, and which will seep back into the archives of sociology?

is but a thinly veiled bit of racism, agism, classism and sexism, not to mention among the worst arguments for the canon I’ve ever heard.  Please.  The passage of time just turns up the volume on the prevailing discourse and drowns out the dissent.  Get real, Helen.

The anthology is incomplete, and it isn’t wrong to problematize its proximity to the period it is anthologizing, but I don’t need some canon worshipping bigot to tell me so.