David Lehman’s The Oxford Book of American Poetry is a selection of poetry from the seventeenth century to the present day, with an introduction and short biographical note on each poet by Lehman.  It is a much-needed update of Richard Ellmann’s The New Oxford Book Of American Verse, which was published in 1976.  Ellmann’s anthology, in turn, revises F.O Matthiessen’s 1950 edited collection The Oxford Book of American Verse.  Lehman draws attention to his predecessors in his introduction to the volume and is complimentary about their methods of poetry selection and editorial control but in the case of Mathiesson’s choices, Lehman ‘feels inclined to do the opposite’.  Lehman’s rationale, therefore, is ‘more poets but less space for each’, hence the weightiness of this anthology.  He includes over two hundred poets, almost three times as many as Matthiessen and Ellmann.

The poets anthologised begin with Anne Bradstreet writing in the seventeenth century and end with John Yau, born in 1950.  Lehman has used the birth year of 1950 as the cut off date for inclusion of poets.  Of the poets in the volume, there are varying amounts of space given to each.  Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are predictably heavily represented and Lehman cites their importance, referring to them as ‘poetic grandparents’ in his introduction.  Interestingly, Lehman prefers Whitman’s original version of ‘Song of Myself’ written in 1855, rather than the 1891-2 revised edition preferred by the previous editors.  The editor has also rightly reclaimed Gertrude Stein as an important poetic figure, including three full poems and excerpts from A Book Concluding with As a Wife Has a Cow A Love Story. 

Inevitably in an anthology like this, there is some controversy in Lehman’s inclusions and omissions and selection of poems.  For example, there are just three poems from Pulitzer-prize winning writer Anne Sexton and puzzlingly, Lehman includes her 1974 poem ‘The Fury of Cocks’ rather than one of her more famous and successful like ‘Housewife’ or ‘her Kind’.  Despite a good selection of Allen Ginsberg’s work there is no ‘Howl’, and just two poems from W D Snodgrass, omitting the masterly ‘Heart’s Needle’.  Admirably, Lehman includes many African- American poets who are collected in the Oxford Anthology for the first time although notably, there is no space for Alice Walker.

Despite these shortcomings, Lehman’s handsome anthology is a welcome addition to the Oxford series and will surely introduce many of these poets to a whole new audience.  One can only look forward to the next update, which will no doubt include many new, fine young poets.