Donald Allen’s anthology The New American Poetry (1960) proved hugely influential to avant-gardeaffiliated writers from its initial publication through today. But why, onewonders, did Allen emphasize the Americanness of his project? After all, TheNew American Poetry placed writers such as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg,Charles Olson, Amiri Baraka, and Frank O’Hara in the context of distinct regionalspheres – labeling the poets as belonging to the "San Francisco Renaissance,"as "New York Poets," as "Black Mountain" poets, and so on. Ensuring readerswould understand the work within all the more as distinctly "American," thecover of the book itself was modeled after the American national flag. Asscholars including Michael Davidson and Alan Golding have shown, Allen'santhology and avant-garde American poetry after World War 2 more broadlyspeaking often uncritically channelled the ideologies of Americanexceptionalism, machismo, and Manifest Destiny to lend credence to itself. Andyet, as I will discuss, the work affiliated with The New American Poetry – andmuch of the writing that followed in its wake – was complexly transnational,proposing a positive vision of an inter-cultural form of globalism before thisterm’s corruption and misuse in political and economic contexts.