Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry Vol. 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude

About this book

As we come to the end of the century the entire vista of modern poetry has dramatically changed. Poems for the Millennium captures the essence of that change and unlike any anthology available today it reveals the revolutionary concepts at the very heart of twentieth-century poetry. International in its coverage these volumes depart from the established poetic modes that grew out of the nineteenth century and instead bring together the movements that radically altered the ways that art and language express the human condition. The first volume offers three "galleries" of individual poetsfigures such as Mallarm Stein Rilke Tzara Mayakovsky Pound H.D. Vallejo Artaud Csaire and Tsvetayeva. Included too are sections dedicated to some of the most significant pre-World War II movements in poetry and the other arts: Futurism Expressionism Dada Surrealism Objectivism and Negritude. The second volume will extend the gathering to the present forming a synthesizing global anthology that surpasses other collections in its international scope and experimental range. Poet-editors Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris provide informative and irreverent commentaries throughout. They challenge old truths and propose alternative directions in the tradition of the revolutionary manifestos that have marked the art and poetry of the twentieth century. The result is both an essential source book for experiencing the full range of this centurys poetic possibilities and a powerful statement on the future of poetry in the millennium ahead.