XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century

by Campbell McGrath

Overview

A poetic history of the twentieth century from one of our most beloved, popular, and highly lauded poets—a stirring, strikingly original, intensely imagined recreation of the most potent voices and searing moments that have shaped our collective experience.

XX is award-winning poet Campbell McGrath’s astonishing sequence of one hundred poems—one per year—written in a vast range of forms, and in the voices of figures as varied as Picasso and Mao, Frida Kahlo and Elvis Presley. Based on years of historical research and cultural investigation, XX turns poetry into an archival inquiry and a choral documentary. Hollywood and Hiroshima, Modernism and propaganda, Bob Dylan and Walter Benjamin—its range of interest encompasses the entire century of art and culture, invention and struggle.

Elegiac and celebratory, deeply tragic and wickedly funny, XX is a unique collection from this acknowledged master of historical poetry, and his most ambitious book yet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062427373
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	907 KB

About the Author

Campbell McGrath is the author of nine previous books, eight of them available from Ecco Press. He has received numerous prestigious awards for his poetry, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been published in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Poetry, and Ploughshares, among other prominent publications, and his poetry is represented in dozens of anthologies. He teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University, and lives with his family in Miami Beach.

Table of Contents

Epilogue: 2016

Book 1

1900 Picasso 5

1901 Hearts of Darkness: Freud and Conrad 6

1902 Picasso 8

1903 Anna Akhmatova 9

1904 Henry Ford 11

1905 Einstein's Clock 13

1906 Matisse: Paris 15

1907 Picasso & Fernande Olivier 17

1908 Apollinaire 20

1909 Gertrude Stein 22

1910 Virginia Woolf: Three Fragments 23

1911 Picasso & Georges Braque 26

1912 Mao: On Childhood 30

1913 Martha 31

1914 Ernest Swinton: "Mother" 33

1915 Picasso & Juan Gris 35

1916 Easter, 1916 37

1917 Mao: On Education 40

1918 Apollinaire: Two Calligrammes 41

1919 Wittgenstein: Letter to Bertrand Russell 43

Book 2

1920 Mao: On Conflict 47

1921 Picasso & Olga Khokhlova 49

1922 August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century 52

1923 Matisse: Nice 54

1924 Kafka 56

1925 Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait Pierced by a Silver Rail 58

1926 Rilke: Les Saltimbanques 59

1927 Fiber 66: Meet the Latest Miracle Product from DuPont 60

1928 Edward L. Bernays 61

1929 Woody Guthrie: Rusty Bedspring Blues 63

1930 Matisse: Tahiti 65

1931 Mao: On Patience 67

1932 Zora Neale Hurston: Farmyard Hymns 69

1933 Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Hand-Mirror and Retablo of Leon Trotsky 70

1934 Picasso 71

1935 Orson Welles: The Stage 72

1936 Woody Guthrie: Come to Nothing Blues 73

1937 Guernica 76

1938 Mao: On the Long March and Protracted War 79

1939 The Atomic Clock 82

Book 3

1980 Virginia Woolf: Four Fragments 87

1981 Woody Guthrie: Twentieth-Century Blues 90

1982 Guadalcanal 94

1983 Picasso & Dora Maar 98

1984 Joseph Goebbels 100

1985 Hiroshima 101

1986 Matisse: Nice 103

1987 Wittgenstein: Letter to Karl Popper 105

1988 Simone de Beauvoir 107

1989 Mao: On History 109

1990 Charlie Parker 111

1991 Matisse: Vence 112

1992 Mike: Hydrogen Bomb Test 114

1993 Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Death Mask and Amputated Limb 115

1954 Akira Kurosawa: Seven Samurai 116

1955 Picasso & Francoise Gilot 117

1956 Mao: On Freedom 120

1957 Elvis Presley 122

1958 Mao: On the Great Leap Forward 129

1959 Willem de Kooning 131

Book 4

1960 Zora Neale Hurston: Enigmatic Atlas 135

1961 Jane Goodall 137

1962 The Pulse of the Planet 141

1963 Sylvia and Ted 143

1964 The Coltrane Changes 145

1965 The Style for Dylan 146

1966 Andy Warhol: Image, Print, Negative 147

1967 The Death of Edward Hopper 148

1968 Picasso & Jacqueline Roque 150

1969 Apollo 152

1970 Jacques Derrida 153

1971 The Ticking Clock 154

1972 Mao: On the Future 156

1973 Picasso 158

1974 The Raspberries 163

1975 Orson Welles: Television 166

1976 John Ashbery 167

1977 Voyager I & II 171

1978 Fernand Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism 173

1979 The Nation's Capital 175

Book 5

1980 Two Poems for Czeslaw Milosz 179

1981 Elegy for Eugenio Montale 182

1982 To Héctor Viel Temperley 183

1983 Georgia O'Keeffe 187

1984 George Orwell 189

1985 Orson Welles: The Life 192

1986 The Hudson 194

1987 Andy Warhol: Waterfall of Dollar Signs 196

1988 Joseph Brodsky in Venice 197

1989 The Berlin Wall 198

1990 Hubble Space Telescope: The Galaxies 199

1991 Lee Atwater's Apocalyptic Dream 201

1992 Digital Clocks 205

1993 Roberto Bolaño 208

1994 Nelson Mandela 210

1995 Seamus Heaney 213

1996 Dolly 214

1997 Jobs v. Gates: The Mind-Body Debate 215

1998 The Word for Dylan 218

1999 Pentatina for Five Artists 220

2000 Prologue 221

Editorial Reviews

A funny, learned, awestruck ode to the last century.” — O magazine

“Expansive. . . . The richness of the book . . . comes from McGrath’s deep understanding of history - especially the latter part of the century- and his ability to choose memories that will resonate with readers.” — Washington Post

“Campbell McGrath’s whizzing, ambitious project captures each of the 20th century’s years in the voice of some great cultural icons. . . . This is a book of ideas. But even more than this, it is a book for velocity itself.” — NPR

“XX…seems to launch its own defense of the humanities and their presence in our lives” — New Yorker

From the Publisher

A funny, learned, awestruck ode to the last century.

O magazine

XX…seems to launch its own defense of the humanities and their presence in our lives

New Yorker

Expansive. . . . The richness of the book . . . comes from McGrath’s deep understanding of history - especially the latter part of the century- and his ability to choose memories that will resonate with readers.

Washington Post

Campbell McGrath’s whizzing, ambitious project captures each of the 20th century’s years in the voice of some great cultural icons. . . . This is a book of ideas. But even more than this, it is a book for velocity itself.

NPR

XX…seems to launch its own defense of the humanities and their presence in our lives

New Yorker

Expansive. . . . The richness of the book . . . comes from McGrath’s deep understanding of history - especially the latter part of the century- and his ability to choose memories that will resonate with readers.

Washington Post

03/01/2016
"What lasts, what endures, as Shakespeare knew, is this:/ the story of a life." In his latest collection, MacArthur Fellow McGrath (In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys) gives us many stories, marching us year by year through the 20th century to tell its story by capturing an important individual or moment. Many of those represented are artists (Orson Welles claims the quote above), which deftly shows the cross-hatching of art and history; "Hearts of Darkness: Freud and Conrad (1901)" opens, "Messages from the interior: darkness & illumination,/ dreams and blood," then goes on to reference proper Vienna and colonial-era "Belgian savagery." Figures from Pablo Picasso to Chairman Mao recur, and even key artifacts such as Dupont's Fiber 66 appear. McGrath ably captures the flow of history, though sometimes it feels as if he's just getting through the facts ("The war changed me. Cambridge is a fond memory," from "Wittgenstein: Letter to Bertrand Russell (1919)." What's best are the sudden, affecting moments in the swirl of things: says Martha, the last passenger pigeon, "They are not like to treat you any kinder/ beneath a sky that echoes only the longing in their hearts." VERDICT This ambitious collection will especially satisfy those who appreciate narrative poetry. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal