Abstract: Selected Modern Chinese Poetry (1919-1949), edited by Zang Kejia and published in 1956 by China Youth Press, is the first and one of the most important anthologies of modern poetry in China since 1949. For literary construction in modern China, its preface, "An Outline of the Development of Modern Chinese Poetry since the 'May Fourth Movement'", has reconstructed the history of the development of modern Chinese poetry from 1919 to 1949, which saw anti-imperialistic and anti-feudalistic themes highlighted and realism become the mainstream. Because the editor used it as a historical framework and discourse basis to break through the existing knowledge system of modern poetry by reselecting poets and poems, the book has drawn a new map of modern poetry and produced knowledge of poetry that met the requirements of that period. The circulation of the anthology was so large that it became the most important reader for a generation to understand modern Chinese poetry. An objective and deep study of the book, however, has yet to appear. In fact, if one contextualizes the anthology in the history of poetry selection for the past century, and in the history of continuing canonization of modern poetry since the 1920s, it is not difficult to find that the book has unique historical functions for selection and canonization of modern Chinese poetry.

Key words: Selected Modern Chinese Poems (1919-1949), context of selection, reconstructed history of modern Chinese poetry, knowledge production, function of canonization