What is not interesting is that which does not add to our
knowledge of any kind; that which is vaguely conceived and loosely
drawn …

—Matthew Arnold

When the poet Paul Hoover’s new anthology arrived in the mail,
I was impressed first
by its thickness and weight, then by its title. Postmodern
American Poetry
would seem to cover a great deal of ground, an entire historical
period, and might alone justify the heft of the volume, leaving room
for poets of many sorts and persuasions. Aren’t we all, I thought, in
some way postmodern, if one understands by that the fact of coming
after the first generation of moderns, whose achievement might, for
some at least, seem so overwhelming as to constitute a major
aesthetic barrier?

When I leafed through the anthology I found myself both surprised and
disappointed. Where were the names I expected to find, and the
poems? Where were Louis Simpson, James Wright, Donald Hall, and
others of my generation? Where were Wendell Berry, Thomas McGrath,
and William Stafford? Where, given the context and the poetics, were
older poets like George Oppen and Kenneth Rexroth?

And then it became clear to me that I was for the moment engaged with
what appears to be a subculture of poetry, whose prominent names
include Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, Diane Wakoski and Ron
Padgett, Anne Waldman and David Lehman, along with an array of
younger talents, many of them previously unknown to me.