A History of Modern Poetry, Volume I: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode

“Mr. Perkins has shouldered his burden with daring and carried it with poise… We must be grateful to him for this strong first volume of a two-volume study that, when completed, will be the only one of its kind and should prove itself indispensable.”—Richard Ellmann, The New York Review of Books

“Perkins has marshaled an enormous amount of material from the 1890s period to the death of Yeats in 1939… These were vivacious and exciting decades and Mr. Perkins tells their story well.”—The New York Times

“A most extraordinary work, unquestionably the most understanding presentation of how modern poetry shaped itself… There is nothing like it, nothing which is both so affable and yet so penetrating, critical and creative.”—Louis Untermeyer

“Perkins deals admirably with those who, in the present canon, are deemed major figures, but he also summons up many poets and modes of poetry now slipping into the ‘background.’ He thus restores to us a lost sense of ambiance, an awareness of how various and complex certain periods of poetry were to themselves, before they were simplified.”—Richard Wilbur