New British Poetry (2004)
New British Poetry is a 2004 poetry anthology edited by Scots poet Don Paterson and American poet Charles Simic.
In his preface, Simic wrote: "To make it as current as possible, Don Paterson and I decided to include only poets born after 1945 who have had at least two books published. Aside from that constraint, our plan was simply to read a lot of poetry and pick out poems we like."
In a review of the book, Zachariah Wells writes that the editors "favour taste over tact, to exclude work from that school of opaque hermeticism known variously as 'experimental,' 'postmodern' or 'avant-garde' poetry. This is a conscious decision, made explicit by Paterson "
Paterson, in his "passionately opinionated" introduction, has a defense of mainstream poetry:
- The work of the Postmoderns delegates the production of meaning to the reader, their poetry being largely derelict in its responsibility to aid it. The reader is alone. For those of us quickly bored by our own company, the result is work that can be objectively described as extremely boring.
Read more about New British Poetry (2004): Poets Included, Other Information, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words british and/or poetry:
“The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together, and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science their labour bore fruit.”
—George Mikes (b. 1912)
“Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)