From the Other Side of the Century

From the Other Side of the Century: "A New American Poetry, 1960-1990" is a poetry anthology published in 1994. It was edited by American poet and publisher Douglas Messerli – under his own imprint Sun and Moon Press ISBN 978-1-55713-131-7 – and includes poets from both the U.S. and Canada.

It joined two other collections which appeared at that time: Paul Hoover's Postmodern American Poetry (Norton, 1994) and Eliot Weinberger's American Poetry Since 1950 (Marsilio, 1993). All three perhaps seeking to be for that time what Donald Allen's The New American Poetry (Grove Press, 1960) was for the 1960s. Publishers Weekly noted that "A strength of Messerli's book: he offers space enough to each poet, so that readers can trace developing poetic concerns, beginning with the Objectivists – the anthology's first poem is Charles Reznikoff's "Children," a Holocaust piece."

Messerli highlights 81 poets altogether and organizes the anthology by dividing the poets into four thematic "gatherings":

• (1) cultural-mythic poets, including Louis Zukofsky, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, and Allen Ginsberg;
• (2) urban poets, including Barbara Guest, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and Ted Berrigan;
• (3) language poets, including Robert Creeley and Charles Bernstein; and
• (4) performance poets, including John Cage and Jerome Rothenberg.