Tammy: You put your finger on an interesting point. Rebel Angels took a surprising amount of critical heat within the formalist community. Edge City Review went after it for being too PC, if I recall, and I think New Criterion went after it for showcasing the wrong poets and poems. Of course, as you would expect, a certain amount of this heat derives from those who were left out and feel slighted. Personally, I thought the selection of poets was OK--15 or so of the 25 deserved to be there, not a bad batting average, although there were a few weak choices (both on quality and degree of formality) that did seem driven by a need to appear "inclusive". I think the more serious objection--showcasing the wrong poems--had some merit in some cases. For Tom Disch they got his greatest, but the selections for Mary Jo Salter and a few others are more easily second-guessed. Jarman and Mason are feeling a bit bruised by it all, which is too bad because they are both decent and talented folks (Jarman's Questions For Ecclesiastes is one of the best books of the decade) although part of the heat comes from the fact that the book is so important because we don't have many anthologies and we get excluded from Best American Poetry and the like for the most part.
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