Contemporary American Poetry

📅 1962 ✏️ Donald Hall 📖 Penguin Books 📚 Multiple editions through the 1970s–80s; 7th edition (with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson) expanded to 66 poets

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Contemporary American Poetry (1962), edited by Donald Hall for Penguin Books, became the dominant academic anthology for postwar American poetry courses in the United Kingdom and North America. It was the Penguin counterpart to the rival Oxford anthology New Poets of England and America, and its selections — Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Roethke, Plath, Ginsberg, O'Hara, Wilbur — shaped how a generation of students encountered living American verse.

Overview

Published as a Penguin paperback original in 1962, Contemporary American Poetry was edited by Donald Hall, who was then a young poet associated with the Harvard and Oxford poetry scenes. The anthology was designed as a compact, affordable introduction to living American poets for a British and international audience, and it became the most widely adopted text for postwar American poetry courses — especially in the United Kingdom, where the Penguin brand and price made it the default choice for university syllabi.

Scope and Contents

The first edition ran approximately 200 pages and featured biographical headnotes before each poet's selections — an editorial choice that made the anthology feel like a guided tour of contemporary verse rather than a bare collection of texts. Poets included Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Richard Wilbur, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Gary Snyder, James Wright, and others who would become the dominant figures of mid-century American poetry.

Editorial Approach and Rivalries

Hall's anthology is often discussed alongside its Oxford University Press rival New Poets of England and America (1957, edited by Hall himself with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson), which favoured the more formalist, academic "cooked" poetry that Robert Lowell had famously contrasted with the "raw" poetry of Donald Allen's The New American Poetry (1960). Hall's Contemporary American Poetry was more inclusive than the earlier Oxford volume — it spanned from formalists like Wilbur to Beats like Ginsberg and New York School poets like O'Hara — and reflected the broader, less polarized poetic landscape of the 1960s.

Historical Significance

For a generation of British and Commonwealth readers, Hall's anthology was the primary conduit through which postwar American poetry was encountered and studied. Its Penguin price point and wide distribution meant it reached far beyond the American university audience of Grove Press's The New American Poetry. Precisely because it was more moderate than Allen's radicals-only collection, it was adopted by universities and became the textbook that defined what "contemporary American poetry" meant in the classroom.

Criticism

Later editions expanded significantly — the seventh edition featured 66 poets — but critics noted that Hall's selections remained weighted toward the white, male, academically-affiliated poets of the mid-century establishment. Women poets and poets of colour were underrepresented relative to their actual contributions to American poetry in the 1960s through 1980s, a gap that later anthologies such as the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women explicitly sought to correct.

Related Anthologies

The New American Poetry, The New Poetry

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Contemporary American Poetry?

Contemporary American Poetry (1962), edited by Donald Hall for Penguin Books, was the dominant academic anthology for postwar American poetry courses, featuring Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Roethke, Plath, Ginsberg, and O'Hara, among others.

How was Hall's anthology different from The New American Poetry?

Donald Allen's The New American Poetry was radical-focused (Beat, Black Mountain, New York School), while Hall's Penguin anthology took a broader, less polarized approach that included both formalist poets and Beats. Hall's was the academic textbook; Allen's was the manifesto.

Why did this anthology dominate university courses?

Its low Penguin paperback price and wide distribution made it the default choice for British and Commonwealth universities teaching postwar American poetry, reaching far beyond the niche audience of radical-focused collections.

Last updated: 2026-07-01