The Voice That Is Great Within Us is Hayden Carruth's anthology of American poetry of the twentieth century, first published in 1970 and long a standard paperback introduction to the period. Its premise is that the six decades of American verse following the arrival of the modernists represent one of the country's great collective achievements, and Carruth sets out to show that achievement in its full range. The book gathers work by well over a hundred poets, from Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore through the generations of Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, and the poets who came of age in the 1960s. The title is drawn from a line by Wallace Stevens.
What distinguishes the anthology is its breadth and its editor's independence of taste. Carruth, himself a poet and critic who edited Poetry magazine and later wrote from rural Vermont, included not only the canonical figures but many lesser-known writers, giving room to plainspoken, regional, and politically engaged voices alongside the high modernists, and he prefaces each poet with a brief biographical note. Arranged roughly chronologically by poets' births, the collection lets readers trace how American poetry moved from formal experiment toward the confessional, the Beat, and the open-form writing of mid-century. For readers seeking a single generous volume through which to wander the territory of modern American poetry, it remains a rewarding companion.