This document summarizes contemporary American poetry from 1945-1990. It describes the traditionalist movement that used established forms and diction. Robert Lowell was the most influential poet of this period. It also describes idiosyncratic poets who developed unique styles drawing on tradition. Experimental poetry emerged, including the Black Mountain and San Francisco schools. Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were also influential. Later, women poets and feminist poets gained prominence. Surrealism and existentialism introduced symbolist techniques through poets like Eliot, Stevens, and Pound.

1. UNIVERSITY OF THE ARMED
FORCES
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY
BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
DAYANA CRISTINA TAMAYO

2. CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN POETRY
(1945 – 1990)
TRADICIONALISM
Established forms and diction using rhyme or set of metrical pattern
• Precise
• Realistic
• Witty
• Rhetorical diction
• Fluency
• Verbal pyrotechnics
• Rhyme and meters
• Originality

3. ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977)
 Most influential poet of the period
 Uses traditional rhymes, colloquialism, confessional poetry, autobiographical
explorations, technical innovation using psychoanalysis
“Land of Unlikeness” (1944)
“Lord Weary’s Castle2 (1946), won a Pulitzer Prize
“Children of Light” (1946), poem about violence and early work
“The Mills of the Kavanaughs” (1951), dramatic monologues of tenderness and failings
“Life Studies” (1959)
“For the Union Dead” (1964)

4. IDIOSYNCRATIC POETS
Developed unique styles drawing on tradition but extending it into new
realms with a contemporary flavor
 John Berryman
 Theodore Roethke
 Richard Hugo
 Philip Levine
 James Dickey
 Elizabeth Bishop
 Adrienne Rich

5. SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)
 Her early poetry was well crafted and traditional
 Late poems exhibit bravura and proto-feminist, brutal directness
 Uses a nursery rhyme language
 The Bell Jar” (1963), fairy-tale about
 “The Applicant” (1966), expresses the emptiness current role of the wife

6. RICHARD HUGO (1923-1982)
 He wrote nostalgic and confessional poems, about shame, failure,
relationships.
 He focused in the attention of the reader than with inconsequential
details to make more significant points
 “What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American ” (1975)

7. ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) and
ADRIENNE RICH (1929-)
ELIZABETHBISHOP
 She was interested in remote landscapes and metaphors of travel
 She wrote highly crafted poems in a descriptive style with hidden
philosophical depths
 “At the Fishhouses”(1955), description of the ice-cold North Atlantic
ADRIENNERICH
 Writing poems in traditional form and meter, and metaphors
 “Diving Into the Wreck” (1973), evoking a woman’s research for identity

8. EXPERIMENTAL POETRY
The Black Mountain School (Black Mountain College in Asheville, North
Carolina)
Early 1950s
 Charles Olson, “projective verse” spontaneity and of the breath pause in
speech
 Robert Creeley, “The Warning” (1955), writes with a terse and
minimalist style
 Robert Duncan
 Ed Dorn
 Jonathan Williams

9. EXPERIMENTAL POETRY
The San FranciscoSchool(simple, accessible and optimistic poetry)
Influenced by Eastern philosophy and religion
Their poetries looks to nature instead of literary tradition as a source of
inspiration
 Gary Synder, “Above Pate Valley” (1955)
 Jack Spicer
 Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 Phil Whalen
 Kenneth Rexroth
 Joanne Kyger
 Diane diPrima

10. EXPERIMENTAL POETRY
Beat Poets (beatniks)
Inspired by jazz, Eastern religious, and the wandering life
Beat poetry is oral, repetitive and effective in readings
 Allen Ginsberg
 Gregory Corso, “Marriage”, humorous poems
 Kerouac
 William Burroughs, “The Naked Lunch” (1959)
 Lawrence Ferlinghetti “A Coney Island of the Mind” (1958) humorous and
political poetry

11. SURREALISM AND
EXISTENTIALISM
Express unconscious through vivid dreamlike imagery
Introduced symbolist techniques
 T.S Eliot
 Wallace Stevens
 Ezra Pound
 W.S. Merwin, be epigrammatic
 Robert Bly, political surrealism
 Charles Simic
 Charles Wright, “The New Poem” (1973),
 Mark Strand, speaks of extreme deprivation

12. WOMEN POETS AND FEMINIST
Poets had adhered to an androgynous ideal, believing that gender made no
difference in artistic excellence
 Amy Clampitt
 Rita Dove
 Jorie Graham
 Carolyn Kizer
 Maxine Kumin
 Denise Levertov
 Audre Lorde
 May Swenson
 Mona Van Duyn