20th Century American Poetry is a comprehensive and chronological anthology of 59 essays on poetry by 54 poets. Starting with James Weldon Johnson and Robert Frost, the book collects diverse and often conflicting accounts of the nature and function of poetry. The collection includes rarely anthologized essays by Jack Spicer, Rhona Espaillat, Anne Stevenson, and Ron Silliman, and also work by some of the finest younger critics in America, including William Logan, Alice Fulton, and Christian Wiman.