In Rita Dove’s, The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry, she introduces her readers to the most noteworthy and captivating poems of the past hundred years. In the introduction, Dove enlightens her readers with the history of the authors that are featured. After reading the introduction, I was excited to learn that I would be reading and interpreting poems by arguably the greatest poets of the time period. The introduction is important because it provides readers with not only insight into the history of the literary movement but also why Dove decided to include works that she did. 

Within the pages that my group and I were assigned, first introduced Robert Frost. Despite the constant neglect and criticism Frost received, he reputation remains as being one of the most celebrated poets of his time. Specifically, many saw Frost as being different from other writers and also questioned his writing style. As Dove states in the introduction, “One could explain away the phenomenon of Robert Frost with the adage “He who dies with the most toys wins”, but that would be unfair and, in fact, optimize the dismissive attitude characterizing the Frost-bashing of the 1970s and 1980s.”, I didn’t know what exactly “Frost-bashing “was and wondered about the extent of the adversity he faced during the time. Despite the misfortune, Frost is known as being of the most respected poets of the twentieth century. 

Moreover, the next featured poet is Wallace Stevens who essentially was one of the writers to develop modernism during the literary movement. As I was reading the introduction, I noted the part where Dove emphasize that readers must first understand the Victorian Era in order to even begin to why modernism was so important. I then did research about it and found that modernism developed due to writers wanted to differentiate themselves from Victorian Era which primarily focused on political reform and religion. Wallace became known as “the poet of the mind” because of the way in which his poems sought to be cerebral or analytical. As I continued to read I learned that during the end of the nineteenth century, the Victorian Era began to be questioned by theorist or as Dove states “begun to show cracks”. This is when the revelations of Darwinism, as known as the theory of evolution derived. From my understanding or interpretation, I began to develop that modernism essentially influenced the idea that the truth can be anything and that nothing necessarily has one meaning. This realization is of course what ignited the new literary movement. I began to think the theoretical approaches such as New Criticism coined by John Crowe Ransom which actually focuses on the importance of close reading and also discourages the use of outside sources or evidence in order to interpret the work. I was thrilled to have made a connection of this prior knowledge I had prior to reading the introduction. The fact that this same literary device was developed during the early twentieth century is what led me to make the connection. Other poets that were mentioned such as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and E.E. Cummings also add to the discussion of the literary movement and how it progressed during the time period. 

As I read the I noticed how a timeline was somewhat formed, I was not certain but personally, as I read, I saw as things feel into place as the literary movement progressed. Ultimately, the introduction made me excited to continue to read the remainder of the book and learning about the history or the time period in which the featured writer wrote allowed me to obtain a greater understanding of what’s to come and prepare myself for it.