NEW COASTS AND STRANGE HARBORS: Discovering Poems

Hill and Perkins have searched for poems that are ""brief, sensual and vivid,"" and within those criteria this is an excellent collection indeed. Cummings, Macleish, Williams, Roethke and Wilbur are represented by selections that are familiar but not quite the ubiquitous ones found in most anthologies, and there are generous samples of Reed Whittemore, Mark Van Doren, Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Nemerov and Dorothy Donnelly, with glimpses of Gary Snyder, Philip Booth and many other poets well worth meeting All well and good, provided that readers be made aware of how much of modern poetry has been left out -- the beats, the New York School, even, for the most part, black and ""confessional"" poets (Plath and Sexton are here, but in uncommonly gentle moods). An anthology for students (and the editors state that this was compiled for their college classes) ought to contain at least a brief statement of its limitations. Otherwise this is a sensible, attractive presentation of poems that the minimally-attuned reader is likely to find fresh, beautiful, and not overly disturbing.