Innovative poetry and intro to poetry

I am teaching two sections of intro to poetry in the spring. I've taught with a lot of the Norton/Vendler/Gioia anthologies (etc.) in the past and I am very tired of them.



I was thinking of just using five books of contemporary poetry. It is a general education class. They don't need to know the canon (if anyone does). It's not really a survey class. There's usually about 40 students per section and most are just trying to get their lit credit out of the way.



One problem I've had with using individual collections of stories or poems is getting the books on time. Since the books are almost always published by a small press, it seems to take over half of the semester for 80 copies of each book to show up at the bookstore.



An anthology is certainly a lot easier. There's never a problem with ordering. The university bookstore seems to have a very fast pipeline to college textbook companies. Within days there's hundreds of copies.



The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry or a world poetry anthology might be worth a look.



I've got to find it interesting.

I can't teach something I don't feel

It just doesn't

work (or I don't work,

as in function,

in every sense of the word).