discuss their craft. Ruben’s introduction provides a useful overview of pre-1970
American poetry and its legacy.
Bill Moyers, The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (New York: Doubleday,
1995).
A companion volume to the PBS series of the same name that includes transcrip-
tions of Moyers’s “conversations” with thirty-four poets who share insights into
their work and lives. Students might wish to locate the video or audio recordings
of interviews with poets they are interested in studying.
Moyers, ed., Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft (New York:
Perennial, 2000).
Based on interviews Moyers conducted at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 1998 with
eleven poets, provides insights into the poets’ craft and samples of their work.
Students might wish to locate the recordings of interviews with poets they are
interested in studying.
Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair, eds., The Norton Anthol-
ogy of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, volume 2: Contemporary Poetry (New
York: Norton, 2003).
Offers a broad and definitive survey of contemporary poetry, both traditional and
experimental.
Cole Swenson and David St. John, eds., American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of
New Poetry (New York: Norton, 2009).
Introduces a wide range of contemporary experimental and hybrid poets.
Criticism
Christopher Beech, Poetic Culture: Contemporary American Poetry between Com-
munity and Institution (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999).
Places debates about contemporary poetry in their sociocultural contexts.
John Felstiner, Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009).
Contextualizes poetry, including the contemporary, with environmental
concerns.
Dana Gioia, Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture (St. Paul, Minn.:
Graywolf Press, 2004).
Collection of essays that examine the form and thematic concerns of poetry
beyond print culture.
David Lehman, ed., Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 85 Leading Contemporary
Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems, second edition (Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 1996).
Updated edition that features eighty-five contributors. The introduction pro-
vides an overview of forms represented (“villanelles, pantoums, prose poems,