A shift away from an assumption that traditional form, ideas & history can provide meaning & continuity

to human life World War II produced a sense of history as discontinuous: each act, emotion & moment is seen as unique Familiar categories of expression are suspect

 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Originality is the new tradition The historical causes for this dissociated sensibility are: World War II The rise of anonymity & consumerism in mass urban society The protest movements of the 1960s Decade long Vietnam conflict The Cold War Environmental threats The rise of mass media: radio, movies, TV, compact discs & cassettes

 American poetry has been influenced by mass media & electronic technology Poetry offers people a way to express subjective life & articulate the impact of mass society & technology on individual Inexpensive photographic methods of printing have encouraged young poets to self-publish & young editors to publish literary mags

A host of styles vie for competition Contemporary American poetry is decentralized, richly varied & impossible to summarize Conversely, however, it can be arranged along a spectrum: 1. The traditional poets 2. The idiosyncratic poets 3. The experimentalists

The Traditional Poets

Maintained or revitalized poetic tradition They are the acknowledged masters of traditional forms & diction who write with a readily recognized craft They often use rhyme or a set metrical pattern Welcome resounding poetic lines They come from the U. S. Eastern seaboard or from the southern part of the country

 The Fugitive poets are included in these ranks Refinement, respect for nature & profound conservative values are their hallmark Precise, realistic & witty poets Rhetorical diction of obsolete or odd words, using many adjectives Although many traditional poets use rhyme, not all rhymed poetry is traditional

Confessional poetry: a new mode in which poet bared his most tormenting personal problems with great honesty & intensity Robert Howell initiated this kind of poetry

The Idiosyncratic Poets

1. 2. 3. 4.

These poets combined traditional & innovative techniques in creating unique voices They extended tradition into new realms with a distinctively contemporary flavor Important poets include Sylvia Plath Theodore Roethke Elizabeth Bishop Adrienne Rich

The Experimentalists
They courted new cultural styles in poetry It begun in the 1950s by a number of poets who may be divided into five schools Inspired by jazz & abstract expressionist painting They tend to be bohemian, countercultural intellectuals Outspokenly criticised bourgeois American society

Daring, original, & sometimes shocking Looser forms which arise from the subject matter & the feeling of the poet as the poem is written & from the natural pauses of language Projected Verse: insisted on an open form based on the spontaneity of the breath pause in speech & the typewriter line in writing

Donald Allens Division

The schools are: 1.The Black Mountain School 2.The san Francisco School 3.Beat Poets 4.The New York School 5.Recent movements & experiments: surrealism, existentialism

Beat Poetry
Emerged in 1950s Oral, repetitive & immensely popular in readings It developed out of poetry readings in underground clubs Some call it the grand-parent of par music that became popular in 1960s Anti-establishment form of poetry A cry of pain & rage at what the pot sees as the loss on innocence in America

Multiethnic Poetry
Renaissance in multiethnic literature in the second half of the 20th c. during the 1970s, ethnic studies programs, conferences, academic journals & literary magazines began commanding public attention Important issues included race versus ethnicity, ethnocentrisms vs. polycentricism, monolingualism vs. bilingualism coaptation vs. marginalization

Prominent Ethnic Groups

Hispanic-Americans Native Americans: Simon Ortiz African Americans: Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Asian Americans

New Dimensions
Language poets: stretch language to reveal its potential for ambiguity, fragmentation & self assertion within chaos Ironic, postmodern, they reject metanarratives _ideologies, dogmas, conventions, They propose open forms & multicultural texts

 Images from popular cultures & the media are fashioned & refashioned by them Poetry slams: open poetry reading contests that are held in alternative art galleries & literary book stores At the end of the theoretical spectrum are the New Formalists who champion the cause of a return to form, rhyme & meter

Performance Poetry
Performance oriented poetry: jazz improvisations, mixed media work (film, video, acoustics & technology) Ethnic performance poetry centered around rap music

Sound poetry
Emphasized the voice & instruments

Concrete poetry
Makes a visual statement using placement & typography