In his preface, Simic wrote: "To make it as current as possible, Don Paterson and I decided to include only poets born after 1945 who have had at least two books published.
Aside from that constraint, our plan was simply to read a lot of poetry and pick out poems we like.
"[1] In a review of the book, Zachariah Wells writes that the editors "favour taste over tact, to exclude work from that school of opaque hermeticism known variously as 'experimental,' 'postmodern' or 'avant-garde' poetry.
This is a conscious decision, made explicit by Paterson [...]"[2] Paterson, in his "passionately opinionated"[2] introduction, has a defense of mainstream poetry: The volume includes work from 36 poets from England, Scotland, and Wales (not Northern Ireland):
ISBN 1-55597-394-9 (paperback) 256 pages This poetry-related article is a stub.