Reviews for The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets

The average rating for The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-04-11 00:00:00 Kristina Cox I'm going to be frank; I've only read a very small portion of this collection. I bought it after hearing Wilmer Mills read one of his poems included herein. I was very lucky to have met him briefly after the reading. I was completely enthralled. I bought this book on the spot, and I count myself extremely lucky to have shaken his hand while I had the chance. He was an absolute beacon of poetic power, and in my mind enough to make this book worth buying regardless of the rest (though I do plan to read it all some day).

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-02 00:00:00 Kimberly A Curry A very sober collection of thirty-five poets, giving a pretty generous selection-- at least five poems, and often more-- from each. The introduction makes the case that these poets are post-poetry wars, and I guess that means they are supposed to be wideranging because they are post-orthodoxy. I didn't find that to be quite true-- the poets largely wrote the same poem over and over here. It's a good poem, a serious poem that while it's interested in language, and especially in sentence and stanza as vehicles for thought, is more than words interested in thought-- these are dense, probing, meditative-philosophical poems of a sort of well-read, well-fed type. These are poems that rise out of a study of poetic tradition, and which, I think, see themselves first as part of that tradition, and only secondarily as being the products of lived experience. I really don't mean to crack on the poems in this book, many of which were very enjoyable to read, just to suggest that as a book, it lacks a little variety and verve. I found it by the end a little dull, which is too bad because the last poets in the book (especially Wunderlich and C. Dale Young but also editor Yezzi), in any other circumstance, would seem anything but that. It's hard not to feel like there'd be more pleasure in reading any one of these poets in isolation than mashed back-to-back-to-back like they are here.