In one sense, anthologies might be said not only to respond to anxiety about the status of poetry, but also to attempt to repair it. The truth about contemporary poetry might be fragmentation and unclassifiable diversity, but the anthology insists that poetry can still be defined. Similarly, anthologies are a way of keeping poetry on the wider cultural agenda because they are likely to be reviewed in national newspapers and journals where poetry is otherwise ignored. This is why introductions to poetry anthologies always tend to over-emphasise the extent to which the work they collect has been involved with the social and political events of its times. Anthologies insist on poetry's continuing importance, but perhaps the most curious and interesting thing about them is that they do so through a series of paradoxes.
The first paradox is that anthologies claim to be objective historical surveys when they are, in fact, the product of individual taste and, in some cases, of publishing politics. This leads into the second paradox which is that anthologies claim to be inclusive when they are, in fact, highly selective. For example, to the untrained eye scanning the bookshop shelf, Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 might seem to offer a comprehensive survey, but on a closer examination, it is confined to non-mainstream poetries. The New Poetry (1993)—which I co-edited—claimed to have been compiled 'with total openness to what is being written,' but this was only true with regard to mainstream poetries. Similarly, the period- and century-defining anthologies mentioned earlier find hardly any room for non-mainstream poetries.
The third paradox is that all anthologies claim to represent the diversity of contemporary poetry but manage to do so in a single volume which rather suggests the opposite: that poetry is small enough to go into one book. The fourth paradox is that anthologies claim to represent important shifts in sensibility, but these shifts are often long past by the time the anthology appears and may, in some cases, appear to be historical blips. The final paradox is that anthologies often appear to be compiled according to the old Downbeat poll category of 'talent deserving wider recognition'. However, whatever type of poetry an anthology represents, the very fact they are anthologised is a signal that these writers are in the process of becoming the new establishment, the new canon or whatever. The anthology is the point of crossover.
Most importantly, however, anthologies are symptomatic of the fact that no one can say with any certainty either what poetry is or what is happening in it. To put that another way, they are symptomatic of the fact that anyone can—all perspectives are equal. Once, everyone could agree that poetry was T. S. Eliot or Anne Sexton or Robert Penn Warren. This is no longer the case and explains why anthologies are always the cause of such bitter and heated controversy. There is always at least one argument to be made by someone that a particular anthology is not truly representative.
Jack Self is the author of Spring Fest (Orgone, 2001).
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