As former English majors, E. and I both brought a lot of baggage to this relationship. The baggage mostly takes the form of old Norton anthologies, which are virtually required for any literature student, regardless of the school. Some 15 years later, I still have most of mine, including a poetry anthology I took along, as summer reading, on vacation with a friend in 1985. (We chortled our way through "Marriage," the one that begins Should I get married? Should I be good? and includes the immortal line bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust.)

Anyway, many miles and moves later, the anthologies are still with us, lining an entire shelf, rarely consulted but never discarded. I use them as occasional references and don't give much thought as to how they're compiled. But of course they are compiled, and once a new iteration is finished, the critics pile on. This article offers the latest on the latest.

The "Poetics" prose sections are fun and rewarding--how often does one come across Pound's "Blast" manifesto?--and by including Larkin's "The Pleasure Principle," Ramazani seemingly silences critics who might claim he ignores the non-paraphrasable essence of a good poem. Similarly, his inclusion of W.H. Auden's 1937 "Spain" is something of a public service, as the poem is hard to find in most anthologies.

Yet these are qualifications, not justifications. The fact remains that a surprising quantity of the poems in Ramazani's anthology, specifically in the second volume, seem destined to be forgotten.