Dear Norton publishing,

     I hate to use the overworked word "outraged" but I find it's the only one that accurately describes my reaction when I see that the new full-length edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature includes not a single poem by Robinson Jeffers. The previous edition included seven. What possible reason can there be for this drastic change?

    In an age of global warming and looming environmental catastrophe, Jeffers's vision is more relevant and important than ever. Whenever I have taught Jeffers, students have always found his work thought-provoking and powerful even if they resist or criticize certain aspects of it. Jeffers lyric poetry seems to me so obviously "major," if often flawed (from a particular modernist aesthetic viewpoint), that it is bewildering to me how he could be left ENTIRELY out of a gigantic anthology of the nation's literature. Many students will have their only contact with American poetry through the use of this anthology-that they would be completely deprived of the chance to read Jeffers seems simply wrong. Leaving aside the vexing issues of ethnicity, gender and genre, how can there be space to add poems by O'Hara, Ginsberg, Merrill, Simic and Snyder while completely erasing Jeffers from American literary history? I might add that Simic and Snyder are both strong admirers of Jeffers's work. Please see Simic's wonderfully sensitive and appreciative review of The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (Stanford University Press) in the April 11, 2002 issue of The New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=15252).

     I applaud the addition of Annie Dillard and Mary Oliver to the anthology's meager representation of authors with environmental interests. It's deeply frustrating, however, that John Muir, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez and Wendell Berry are absent. These are all brilliant stylists with vital things to say to contemporary readers about the relationship between humanity and nature. They all have prose pieces that lend themselves easily to the anthology format. I am particularly surprised that Barry Lopez has been omitted by the editors given their obvious preference for including writers of particular ethnicities.

     Because the number of authors with an environmental bent in the Norton is so small to begin with, it is just baffling that the editors removed ALL of Jeffers's work. I would point out that the new edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry includes eight poems by Jeffers. If he is important enough to be included among the most prominent poets of the twentieth century writing in English, then he is certainly important enough to be allowed in to a five-volume collection of American literature. Even the Norton Anthology of Poetry which gathers all of the major poets writing in the English language, includes five of Jeffers's poems. As a user and admirer of the Norton series of anthologies, I urge that the undeniably significant work of Robinson Jeffers be restored to the Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Yours truly, David Morris