Book

American poetry since 1950

Summary:

Since Whitman and Dickinson, most of the major poetry in the United States has been written against the literary establishments and prevailing canons of taste, and often far from the cultural centers. This is the first anthology in many years to gather the work from this continuing tradition of innovators and outsiders, presenting poets and poems that are still excluded from the academic collections. Opening with the last poems of the Modernist masters Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and H.D., the book follows through four generations of writers who have been the primary figures of the new poetries and poetics since 1950. With a historical afterword, complete bibliographies, and generous selections from each of the thirty-five poets, this anthology is the only available introduction to the poets connected with such groups and movements as the Objectivists, the Beats, Black Mountain, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance, and ethnopoetics.

American Poetry Since 1950 is a new map of the territory, an array of known and unknown contemporary classics. It is full of strange texts and startling procedures, histories and natural histories, high lyricism and extended meditations - extraordinary works that challenge our notions of what a poem ought to be.

Record details

ISBN: 0941419924
Physical Description: 433 pages
Publisher: New York : Marsilio, 1993

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

William Carlos Williams -- The Desert Music -- Ezra Pound -- from The Confucian Odes -- Canto XC -- from Canto CXV -- Canto CXVI -- H. D. -- from Hermetic Definition: Red Rose and a Beggar -- Charles Reznikoff -- from Holocaust: Massacres -- Langston Hughes -- from Montage of a Dream Deferred -- Lorine Niedecker -- "Who was Mary Shelley?" -- Pacan to Place -- Darwin -- Louis Zukofsky -- "A"-11 -- from "A"-15 -- from "A"-18 -- from Catullus LXIV -- Kenneth Rexroth -- The Signature of All Things -- Lyell's Hypothesis Again -- Andree Rextoth -- from The Love Poems of Marichiko -- George Oppen -- Route -- from Some San Francisco Poems -- Charles Olson -- The Kingfishers -- "The chain of memory is resurrection..." -- from The Maximus Poems, Book III: Poem 143. The Festival Aspect -- William Everson -- A Canticle to the Waterbirds -- John Cage -- from Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) 1965-1967 -- Muriel Rukeyser -- The Speed of Darkness -- Iris.

In the Underworld -- William Brook -- At Tikal -- Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World -- The Mayan Glyphs Unread -- Corals and Shells -- The Plainest Narrative -- I Thought It Was Harry -- Where It Ends -- The World -- Life Supports -- The Strong Room of the House -- Robert Duncan -- Tribal Memories: Passages I -- The Moon: Passages 5 -- The Fire: Passages 13 -- Up Rising: Passages 25 -- Transgressing the Real: Passages 27 -- The Feast: Passages 34 -- Jackson Mac Low -- from The Presidents of the United States of America0 -- Denise Levertov -- The Jacob's Ladder -- To the Muse -- The Wings -- Advent 1966 -- A Tree Telling of Orpheus -- Jack Spicer -- A Book of Music -- from Language: Thing Language -- Paul Blackburn -- At the Well -- from The Selection of Heaven -- Two poems by Bernart de Ventadorn -- Robert Creeley -- Mazatlan: Sea -- Allen Ginsberg -- The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express -- Wales Visitation -- Frank O'Hara -- In Memory of My Feelings -- John Ashbery.

Into the Dusk-Charged Air -- from The Skaters -- Syringa -- Nathaniel Tarn -- from Lyrics for the Bride of God: Section: America (2): Seen as a Bird -- Journal of the Laguna de San Ignacio -- Gary Snyder -- Burning Island -- What You Should Know to Be a Poet -- What Happened Here Before -- from Mountains and Rivers Without End: The Hump-Backed Flute Player -- from Mountains and Rivers Without End: Earrings Dangling and Miles of Desert -- Jerome Rothenberg -- The 12th Horse Song of Frank Mitchell (Blue) -- Seneca Journal I: "A Poem of Beavers" -- Visions of Jesus -- Hunger -- David Antin -- a list of the delusions of the insane/what they are afraid of -- Definitions for Mendy -- Amiri Baraka -- Return of the Native -- For Maulana Karenga & Pharoah Sanders -- The Minute of Consciousness -- Study Peace -- A Poem for Deep Thinkers -- When We'll Worship Jesus -- Dope -- Clayton Eshleman -- Hades in Manganese -- Deeds Done and Suffered by Light -- Ronald Johnson -- from ARK: Beam 4.

from ARK: Beam 7 -- from ARK: Beam 25: A Bicentennial Hymn -- from ARK: Ark 37: Prospero's Songs to Ariel... -- Robert Kelly -- "Those who are beautiful" -- Studying Horses -- Gustaf Sobin -- Girandole -- Irises -- from The Earth as Air: An Ars Poetica -- Susan Howe -- Thorow -- Clark Coolidge -- Peru Eye, The Heart of the Lamp -- from At Egypt -- Michael Palmer -- from Baudelaire Series -- Sun -- Recursus -- American Poetry Since 1950: A Very Brief History.