The American Poetic Tradition We Could Have Had

How one classic anthology tells the story of twentieth-century American poetry

This essay is part three in James Matthew Wilson’s “Notes on Form” series. Click here for part one, “Second Thoughts on the Poetic Line” and here for part two, “Joyce’s Tetrameters.”

When the American poet Richard Wilbur passed away a few years ago at the age of ninety-six, I found myself pondering all that he meant for our country’s literature, both in …