Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry

The best poetry being written and performed today in Canada and the United States is by an emerging generation of poets who "fuse" the worlds of the oral and the written traditions. These are poets comfortable in print or squinting under the stage lights, whose work crosses all boundaries--performance, spoken word, Gen-X, Web-page poems, slam and MTV-style tele-poetics. Poetry Nation is the first anthology to comprehensively trace the roots of performance and spoken word --from the Beat Generation through to today's sound poets. Poetry Nation is a compelling overview of all the movements in current "alternative" poetries, with special attention to women, gay, Black, Asian, and indigenous writers. Major figures are presented alongside the most exciting younger voices. The anthology features Allen Ginsberg's last poem, a never-collected poem by Evelyn Lau, and a newly-discovered love poem by Ian Stephens. One hundred cutting-edge poets including Sandra Cisneros, Bill Bissett, Clifton Joseph, Ras Baraka, Stan Rogal, Steven Heighton, Lynn Crosbie, Robert Priest, Nicole Blackman, David McGimpsey, Louise Bak, Golda Fried, and Hal Sirowitz.