The Americans enjoyed a genuine "renascence" of poetry in the brief period perhaps beginning with the appearance of POETRY: A MAGAZINE OF VERSE in 1912 through the end of WWII, when the hot medium of TV took the oxygen out of the "local" communities. Between the World Wars, Americans were publishing more than a hundred poetry magazines, thousands of towns had Poetry Societies, and over 4000 poets had volumes for sale. [xi]
The extremely interesting and well-read Editor provides biographical information on each represented poet. The work begins with WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892), and concludes with Anne Sexton (1928-[1974]). [No Frederick Mortimer Clapp, born in New York City in 1879,], even though he was a fellow New Yorker, and no Rod McKuen [b 1933, another HS drop-out]]