Introduction, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, and Randall Jarrell Summary

This book is a collection of poetry by seventy-five different American poets born between 1917 and 1959. The poems range in style and purpose but reflect the freedom that is found in the writing of contemporary poetry.

The Introduction gives a description of American poets and the history of American poetry. American art was predicted to be great, because of the freedom from which it could be born. It was predicted that American poetry would be about the self. The best English language poetry was found in the U.S. in the twentieth century. Poetry from WWII to the present was even more rich than the first half of the century, which is the scope of this anthology. All this great art took...