Typically I take my time with volumes of poetry. I tend to have one author or anthology going at all times as a kind of marginal supplement to my main reading focus. Indeed, that is how I initially approached this volume. Very quickly, however, I found all my other reading displaced by this intelligent and inspired collection of verse, which spans the most significant pre-World War II movements in poetry.

The selection of poets and the deft commentary by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris are so well accomplished I was actually a little disappointed when I came to the end of this 800 page tome. Fortunately there are two more volumes picking up where this one leaves off.

I really can't recommend this enough to anyone. Really, any reader. Not just poetry geeks. Not only do I think poetry is dangerously undervalued in our current educational structure (I'm looking at you, streamlined science/engineering major) and therefore, should be encouraged at every turn, but even a cursory reading of this anthology will leave the reader with a greater sense of poetry's importance (necessity) in the intellectual development of the world but also its intermingled origins and correspondence with more popular main stream movements. This book is that good. It takes a poet like Gertrude Stein and drops her in the midst of a context that makes works like Tender Buttons not seem so out of reach or discouraging.

Read this book. It will open up entire worlds for you.