Who edited the 1960 poetry anthology The New American Poetry?

Donald Allen edited the 1960 poetry anthology The New American Poetry.

The full title is The New American Poetry 1945–1960, and Grove Press published it in 1960. Allen organized the anthology around several postwar experimental movements, including the New York School, the Black Mountain poets, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat poets.

The book helped introduce readers to writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Frank O’Hara, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. Its broad selection also showed that “Beat poetry” was only one part of a much larger American avant-garde literary scene.

A common mix-up is confusing this anthology with later collections devoted specifically to the Beats. Allen’s project was wider: it presented a new generation of American poets active after World War II and emphasized stylistic diversity rather than one unified school.