November 2011 witnessed the rise of an unprecedented debate at the American poetry forum. The parties involved are the U.S. former poet laureate, African American woman poet, Rita Dove, and the most distinguished contemporary American critic Helen Vendler. The cause of the debate is the publication of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove. For a while, newspapers, magazines and the internet have been heated by the fires between Dove and Vendler, as well as their followers. However, underlying this sound and fury, three frequently appeared key words remind us that this debate is a unique multi-dimensional American cultural war. It is the exteriorization of the interweaving and conflicting of racism, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism which coexist in the deep vein of American social culture and ideology.