This is not anthologizing, but a riskless attempt at unedited inclusiveness. It's like reprinting a hundred years' worth of newspapers and calling what you're doing the writing of history. Hollander's notes include a masterful thumbnail biography of each poet, and a time-line chronology clarifies the relations among the writers and their time. We have, as Moore points out, a real need for the genuine in poetry, and it's possible to learn from these volumes of twentieth-century poetry the difference between the genuine and the contrived. But that's not because all the work here is genuine poetry.
Major poets write poems of the first order.
They have a sizable body of work. What makes their poetry of the first order is the fact that their poems contain complete thoughts, and each poem is a new thought. I myself, have stood there by the aquarium, looking at the Statue of Liberty. I was awake. It was no dream.