The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry [Paperback]

I've been reading poetry, now, for nearly 10 years, and have reached that stage when I'm starting to have my own ideas about which poets are significant to me, and why - so that each time I pick up an anthology I'm ready to agree and argue about choices and omissions - that thorniest, and often, I have to admit, potentially arid, of areas. I suppose any editor is taking on the role of a kind of custodian; raking through past and present and looking for the kind of things they'd like to see flourishing; selecting a version of history and shaping a potential future. Edna Longley's anthology of '20th Century Poetry' has the following blurb on its back cover: 'You will not get lost here as in other anthologies - with their vast lists of poets summoned up to serve a critic's argument or to illustrate a journalistic overview. Instead Edna Longley shows you the key poets of the century, and through interlinking commentary points up the connections between them as well as their relationship with the continuing poetic traditions of these islands...' Well, I suppose this is meant to be reassuring, but I confess it is where I start to feel edgy. How for instance, is one meant to engage in the process of deciding who the 'key poets' are without a 'critic's argument'. Beats me.

The blurb goes on: 'This is a vital anthology because the selection is so pared down. Edna Longley has omitted showy, noisy, ephemeral writers who drown out their contemporaries but leave later or wiser readers unimpressed. Similarly there is no place here for the poet as entertainer, cultural spokesman, feminist mythmaker or political commentator...' All this, to me, is staring to take on the familiar sound of a 'critic's argument', and a very conservative one at that. So what are the consequences of this argument, which is so much more than just an argument? Yes, this pared down selection has meant many omissions. Lovers of 20th century modernism might be unhappy at the exclusion of David Jones and J. H. Prynne, to name but two amongst a now populated tradition. There's no room, either, for A.E. Houseman. But the stickiest area of this anthology - not unsurprisingly - seems to be its choices from the post war period, and especially from the last 20 or 30 years - a choice which makes Andrew Motion's and Blake Morison's 'New Poetry' from the 1980s look almost radical. There's no room for Peter Redgrove, Peter Porter, Ken Smith, Elizabeth Jennings, Anne Stevenson, Peter Reading, Sean O'Brien, for instance - all of whom have been critically acclaimed and highly influential. But that's just to name a few. So what about the inclusions? Well, we're in safer hands here - as most of the poems included in the anthology are in fact very strong, and would make wonderful reading for anyone just starting out. But why so much Simon Armitage? And why no Hughes from either 'Crow' or 'Birthday Letters'? Why is there more of Ms Longley's husband, Michael, than there is, for instance, of the work of Tony Harrison? We have a version of 20th Century Poetry which excludes 'V' or any of Harrison's Gulf War poems.

Ms Longley does stake out her claims quite clearly, though, in her introduction - forwarding a case that favors the concentration of the lyric poem, and good old fashioned virtues of craft and tradition, all of which is well said and fair enough. Overall her commentaries are very helpful and intelligent, and it's good to see an editor taking the poems of D H Lawrence, for example, so seriously, and writing so well about them. Equally, her short introductions to each poet are generously sprinkled with the comments of writers about their peers and predecessors. It's good, for example, to read Thom Gunn's comments on Yeats and Eliot, as well as Simon Armitage on Ted Hughes. These small touches make the anthology so much richer.

So all in all, a safe option for the beginner. But don't be fooled by the blurb. Every choice and omission in this anthology articulates an implicit argument on the behalf of its editor. For a more lively and radical selection I'd suggest Bloodaxe's other main anthology, 'Poetry with an Edge', which is entirely partisan, but curiously various, as well as, for the more 'experimentally' inclined, Picador's 'Conductors of Chaos' (if its still in print!). This selection is very conservative - and like many conservative arguments it tries to put forward its case as somehow beyond argument or negotiation itself. But as we all know, selections and omissions don't just happen! People with tastes and arguments make them.

This anthology celebrates the concentrated lyric poem, the resourcefulness of traditional forms, and poetry's capacity to adopt and adapt influences in a changing (and through the twentieth century, traumatic) world. These are poets in conversation with each other, and, inevitably, with a world outside the confines of this - or any - anthology. Their concern is with, in Derek Mahon's phrase, 'keeping the colours new'. This is a superb collection, registering the shock-waves of the century, and validating the resourcefulness of art in a period of almost continual crisis. Yeats and Hardy tower over the century; contemporary poets such as Simon Armitage, Ian Duhig and Selima Hill negotiate with their more famous predecessors. Often neglected poets such as Ivor Gurney are given their due; others, though well-known, such as Bunting and Empson, are rediscovered in a different way, since the process of reading the anthology sparks off previously unnoticed connections and developments. Inevitably, readers may well encounter disappointments because their own favourite names are omitted; but they are extremely unlikely to be disappointed by anything they do actually encounter in the anthology. That's rare enough.