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Hello Peter, I am not sure what you mean by 'the real stuff'. My own belief is that different kinds of poetry/language/art/music reflect and create different kinds of reality. What appealed to about Hybrid was that there was a lot in there, and a good deal of pluralistic inclusion, enough to keep going back to, and also that there were new names in there for me, e.g. Cal Bedient, whose poetry I was glad to discover. Certainly, there will always be names missing, e.g. I would have liked to have seen Lisa Samuels included, although I guess she is better known in the UK through her Shearsman books. But I did not have that sense of 'absolute' claims about the poetry in the anthology, i.e. that this is where it's at - 'the real stuff', and all that - which can make me uncomfortable with other collections. Ian ________________________________ From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:46 AM Subject: Re: Hybrid Thanks Tim and Ian. Further comments will be welcome if anything occurs to you. I'm rather disturbed by the idea of defining the poetry which you presumably think is the real stuff, as a negative: neither this nor that. That's quite apart from questions about people like James Schuyler. One begins to wonder what people actually want from poetry. Pr On 16 Jul 2012, at 11:42, Tim Allen wrote: Hi Peter and Ian, I bought the book a while back and have really enjoyed dipping into it - quite a bit of it appeals to my poetic taste but yes, a small portion of it gives me the usual shrug - and I haven't got around to reading the intro - thought i would rather come to the poems directly. I am going to read it now though. Cheers Tim A. On 13 Jul 2012, at 09:47, ian seed wrote: Hi Peter, > > >I picked up this anthology (first published in 2009) a couple of years ago in the Waterstone's at Lancaster (not sure how it got there, since they only have a very small poetry section). > > >I really enjoyed this 'American Hybrid'. Along with more familiar names - such as John Ashbery, Peter Gizzi, Rosmarie Waldrop, Dean Young, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest - it was a delight to discover the poetry of people like Cal Bedient, Michael Burkard and Mary Jo Bang (to name just a few). > > >I did see a slightly negative review of American Hybrid in Tears of the Fence (if my memory serves me correctly) complaining about the anthology's 'lack of focus' (or some such phrase). However, I loved the feeling of plentifulness that this anthology gives me each time I dip into it (it works well for both longer and shorter sittings). A welcome change from anthologies with titles such as 'the best of', which do rather put me off. Having said that, this Hybrid - like nearly all anthologies in the end - is of course very much a 'selection', with its emphasis on what is sometimes called the 'experimental lyric' . Anyway, for me it was well-worth the 16 pounds or so that I spent on it - it is certainly not one of those books that remain untouched on the shelf. > > >Ian > > > > > > > > > >________________________________ > From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 11:56 PM >Subject: Hybrid > >Has any of you seen the new Norton anthology "American Hybrid" (ed. Cole Swenson and David St.John) and what do you think of it? Mainly, what do you think of the guiding concept "Hybrid", rather than who's in and who's out,which is obviously faulty in some respects at least. >Pr > > >