Anthologies Galore

HANDSPAN OF RED EARTH:

AN ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FARM POEMS

Edited by Catherine Lewallen Marconi

University of Iowa Press

176 pp., $24.95 cloth, $10.95 paper

Here are rattlesnakes, and good, hard-working neighbors, and many bright poems about farm life. The geography is splendid from California on east.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN PROSE AND POETRY 55

Edited by J. Laughlin, with Peter Glassgold and

Griselda Ohannessian

New Directions

240 pp., $24.95 cloth, $11.95 paper

These annual volumes of experimental writing have become an institution. The present number is to be the last of the regular series.

THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1991

Edited by Mark Strand, Series Editor is David Lehman

Collier Books

326 pp., $12.95 paper

This bold, inquisitive gathering from magazine verse of 1990 has scope: sonnet, villanelle, verse essay, even a 20-page free- verse narrative about love betrayed, true-confessions style.

THE PORTABLE BEAT READER

Edited by Ann Charters

Viking, 645 pp., $25

This hefty portable provides ample selections from central Beat works, all the familiar names, memoirs from wives, friends, and related writings from noteworthy authors.

OUT OF THIS WORLD:

THE POETRY PROJECT AT THE ST. MARK'S

CHURCH IN-THE-BOWERY, AN ANTHOLOGY 1966-1991

Edited by Anne Waldman, Foreword by Allen Ginsberg

Crown Publishers, Inc., 640 pp., $20 paper

A door-stopper. This chock-full, grab-bag anthology of the sempiternal open poetry readings at a New York City cultural fixture is a tour. The book includes many poetry celebrities.