SOURCE: A review of The Columbia History of American Poetry, in American Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring, 1995, pp. 195-6.

In the following review of The Columbia History of American Poetry, Bremen discusses the difficulty of compiling such a volume and the successes and shortcomings of Parini's History.

Recounting his signing on as editor for The Columbia History of American Literature, Emory Elliot told the audience at last year’s MLA convention that it was done via instructions from a self-destructing tape recorder, with the theme from Mission Impossible playing in the background. No doubt Jay Parini heard the same tune as he compiled his Columbia History of American Poetry; in fact, the only mission more impossible may be reviewing a work such as this in a succinct and fair way. In other words, it would be easy to focus at length on what the work is not—and it...