Paratextual discourses that accompany numerous anthologies of modern American poetry and The Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry are scrutinized in the paper. The first stage in translating American poetry for Slovenians comprises the choices made by the editor about who and what will be translated, a rather simplified process, consisting of mostly randomly selected authors and poems easily available from existing American anthologies. The role of the editor is thus narrowed to the promoter of the accepted American literary canon or, more likely, to some parts of that canon, without taking into account any changes in perception, which have probably occurred through time in the culture of origin. Translating for anthologies of poetry can thus be understood as creating an image of a part of the literature from which the poems were translated.