Raw Americans: The Persistence of The New American Poetry’s National, Binary Model of Anglophone Poetry

Abstract

This chapter examines the material success of Donald Allen’s anthology and its influence, both on subsequent American poetry anthologies and on the way we think about Anglophone poetry today. Three effects of the anthology are argued. The first is the perpetuation of a division in American poetry between academic and avant-garde. The second is the conflation of American poetry with innovation and British poetry with tradition. The third effect is rooted in the anthology’s inclusion of few women and poets of color, which has contributed to the sense that innovative American poetry has mostly been created by white men. These effects are taken up individually in the book’s later chapters.