The best poetry anthology I know of is Edith Sitwell's The Atlantic
Book, now unfortunately out of print, though it's available in many
public and university libraries. The selection is rich and shrewd, and
the brief and occasional commentary almost always worth while. For
instance I believe it was in connection with Shelley that she remarked
that that a mark of poetic genius is vowel technique which, unlike the
use of consonants, cannot be learned. And she said that Shakespeare,
like the sun, accepts everything human: "Only the cold heart offends."
And how many anthologists can in their prefatory remarks draw on their
personal acquaintance with Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Robert Graves,
and Dylan Thomas?
A runner up is Ezra Pound's From Confucius to Cummings: its selection
and commentary are by academic standards shockingly irresponsible, and
it has numerous other virtues.
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Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.
-- Emerson
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