An excerpt from the David Lazar’s introduction to Considering Garlands: On Anthologies which collects discussions from contributors John D’Agata, Robert Atwan, Joy Castro, Patricia Foster, Philip Lopate, and Jill Talbot
We are all indebted to Meleager of Gadara, who gave us the Garland, which stands for us as the beginning of the anthology, the anthologia, a floral collection, or in Latin, “florilegium.” Meleager connected flora as emblems to various poets and epigrammatists, thus the name of this anthological root of ours. Only parts of the original version of the Garland now survive, subsumed into the larger and later Anthologi Graeca.
“But we can imagine that the urge to collect, to preserve, to arrange precedes even this. There is something floral, and something culinary in the urge to choose and arrange. Because there is the desire to recreate an experience in the anthology – just as there is in a meal, or garden. In all three cases, too, the impulse to share is a generous one, and also bound up in a reasonable degree of ego. As with the chef, the anthologist says, or rather, must assert, “I know what is good, or what is interesting.” And yes, the generous part, is “I’d like you to know it, too.” Perhaps that is confirmation. And sometimes, one might think, it is the desire for influence, though heaven knows that kind of hubris seems bound to have its second parachute fail.