This anthology gathers a range of twentieth-century critical essays attempting to make sense of modern poetry while it was still unfolding.

Edited by poet and critic John Hollander, the collection brings together writers grappling with the aesthetic shifts introduced by figures such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens.

The book shows criticism as an active argument: different approaches to form, difficulty, symbolism, and the changing role of the poet in the twentieth century. It captures a moment when modern poetry was still being negotiated, defended, and explained.

Dense but readable, it works as both a historical snapshot of literary criticism and a practical introduction to the intellectual debates that shaped modernist poetry.