The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century: Volume 1

Influenced in part by Jerome Rothenberg's and Pierre Joris's groundbreaking 20th century poetry anthology in two volumes, Poems for the Millennium: A Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, publisher‹editor Douglas Messerli began in 1995 to edit his own international anthology. Enthused with the range and bast numbers of wonderful poets writing in all languages, Messerli determined to publish three volumes of about 1,200 pages each. But as his research continued, he came quickly to realize that even a project this vast—one of enormous expense and a near-impossible commitment of time and resources—would not sufficiently reveal the panopoly of world poetry in the 20th century.

Messerli began publishing more international poetry through his presses Sun & Moon and Green Interger, and in 1998 he founded the Project for Innovative Poetry with an advisory board of major international poets and critics to explore ways to publish world poetry in English. To achieve the publication of his omnibus anthology, he decided to publish two volumes (containing 20 or 21 poets) each year until he had completed his task.

Containing brief biographies, complete listings of each author's books of poetry with publication information and a fairly large sampling of the poetry in translation, this series will attempt to show what Messerli sees as a century of poetry of no safely contained modes of expression, but rather as "an energetic and often uncontrollable beast of language upon whose back the reader is taken to worlds that exist only in thinking itself."

The first volume contains work by Rafael Alberti (Spain), Ingeborg Bachmann (Austria), Rubèn Dario (Nicaragua); Günter Eich (Germany), Gunnar Ekelöf (Sweden), J.V. Foix (Spain), Angel González (Spain), Jorge Guillén (Spain), Hagiwara Sakutarõ (Japan), Hayashi Fumiko (Japan), Figyes Karinthy (Hungary), Artur Lundkvist (Sweden), Jackson Mac Low (USA), Osip Mandelshtam (Russia), João Cabral de Melo Neto (Brazil), Henri Michaux (Belgium), O.V. de Milosz (Lithuania/France), Ágnes Nemes Nagy (Hungary), Amelia Rosselli (Italy), Rocco Scotellaro (Italy), and Takahashi Mutsuo (Japan).