J. Alfred's Reviews > The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry

Starting with a strong introduction (the best line is "American poets look backward to Whitman like the Romantic Age looked back to Milton"), this is a interesting collection of poetry- the choices included for each author were sometimes confusing, and sometimes unsatisfactory to a fan (Crane has one little poem in the whole of the anthology) but generally strong and even surprising. Is it just me, or do Robert Hayden, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, and, especially, Wallace Stevens get better every time my back is turned?