The Cambridge companion to modern American poetry The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry comprises original essays by eighteen distinguished scholars. It offers a critical overview of major and emerging American poets of the twentieth century in addition to critical accounts of the representative schools movements regional settings archival resources and critical reception that define modern American poetry. The Companion stretches the narrow term of literary modernism which encompasses works published from approximately 1890 to 1945 to include a more capacious and usable account of American poetrys evolution from the twentieth century to the present. The essays collected here seek to account for modern American verse against the contexts of broad political social and cultural fields and forces. This volume gathers together major voices that represent the best in contemporary critical approaches and methods