Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935
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The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935 was a poetry anthology edited by W. B. Yeats, and published in 1936 by Oxford University Press. A long and interesting introductory essay starts from the proposition that the poets included should be all the 'good' ones (implicitly the field is Anglo-Irish poetry, though notably a few Indian poets are there) active since Tennyson's death. In fact the poets chosen by Yeats are notable as an idiosyncratic selection to represent modern verse. The Victorians are much represented, while the war poets from World War I are not. The modernist tendency does not predominate, though it is not ignored; Georgian poetry is covered quite thoroughly, while a Dublin wit like Oliver St. John Gogarty is given much space and praised in the introduction as a great poet.
Yeats was influenced by his personal feelings. Gogarty was a personal friend; he also included poems by Margot Ruddock, with whom he was having a relationship, and other friends such as Shri Purohit Swami. He notes that Rudyard Kipling and Ezra Pound are under-represented because paying their royalties would have cost too much. People have regretted that he did not say which poems he would have added given a free hand.
