The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them

Some anthologies of new poetry try to take a stand, declare a school, say what poetry is now and what it should be. Burt, a poet himself, couldn't include all of his peers in his book, but it seems like he'd like to: what's most striking is how little he wants to limit the field. His pleasure, and he assumes yours, comes from understanding poetry's breadth and possibility, not its narrow pinnacle. For a reader like me, daunted by all the poets I haven't read, his expansive essays breathe air into each poem and give me a dozen handles to hold them by. I'm left with sixty poet's names that mean something more to me now, sixty roads, more or less traveled, to set out on.