“Remaking a Norton Anthology” by Jahan Ramazani in Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2004), 1 West Range, P.O. Box 400223, Charlottesville, Va. 22904–4223.

The intense demands of literary scholarship can often dull the pleasures many of us associate with literature. Such was the sad case for Ramazani, a professor at the University of Virginia, when he was offered the chance to edit a new edition of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry—the book that delivers the poetic canon to tens of thousands of college English students each year. Ramazani was to write overarching introductions, copious footnotes, and the nearly 200 headnotes that outline each poet’s particular literary-historical context, distinctive formal attributes, and biography. Above all, he was to select “the best poems written in English in the last century from across the world.” Faced with this gargantuan task, he turned “pallid.”

He started by reading and rereading the previous edition, which had appeared in 1988. Were the poems still relevant? Imaginative? “Formally skillful? Histor­ically and socially responsive?” Were they too American? Too British? Too postcolonial? After months of deliberation, Rama­zani had created a “grand anthological structure—its proportions carefully balanced and calibrated.”

Then he was told to cut $40,000 worth of permissions costs from his $500,000 budget. His artful structure gave way to a spreadsheet and a new question: “Should I dump one overpriced poem and buy 10 at a discount?” Even after these reckonings, questions persisted. Which “Nat”—King Cole, Adderley, or Turner—was Amiri Baraka referring to in his poem about Thelonious Monk? Only the poet could answer.

Two years later, in 2003, the anthology—195 poets, 1,596 poems—was ready. Rama­zani had excised nearly half of the previous edition and added an entire second volume to make room for additional long poems and essays. He had even changed half the title to Modern and Contem­porary to highlight the expanded selection of more recent poems. Ramazani had reconceptualized the canon. Though this was serious work, it had a lighter side. In Greek, as Rama­zani learned, anthos means flower and logia means gathering. Though built on a foundation of research and political and economic calculation, the anthology provided an opportunity for its editor—and its readers—to stop and smell the poesies.