We love, it seems, to imagine there was some golden
age, a generation, or a century ago, when poets
really knew what they were doing, and could be
relied upon to intrigue, but not to puzzle, to
challenge but not demand, to fit neatly into their
periods and schools, the pliable creatures of
a fixed taxonomy, knowable, classified, ordered.
The exciting thing about the present, especially
in the United States, is the sheer number and
extraordinary quality of contemporary North American
poets, pursuing such a variety of ends and engaged
with such a variety of processes.
So it is hard - probably impossible - to attempt
an overview of American poetry in so short a
space as this. All one can do is point to the
rich diversity of writing and cite a few random,
or favourite, examples: in my own case, with
roughly equal degrees of randomness and favouritism,
a number of poets who have crossed the Atlantic
and have at some point been published in the
UK, poets like Jorie Graham, Mark Doty, Chase
Twichell, Thomas Lynch, Billy Collins and many
others, but also - and for our present purposes,
more interestingly - a significant number who
have not, (other than in anthologies). I'm thinking
here - again the personal and the random creep
in to some extent - of astonishingly gifted
writers like Allison Funk, Linda Gregerson,
Joy Harjo, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Rodney Jones,
Jennifer Atkinson, Eric Pankey and our featured
poet, Robert Wrigley, whose most recent book,The
Lives of the Animals, (Penguin, 2003) is,
in my opinion, a living, breathing, honest-to-goodness
contemporary masterpiece.
What is it about these poets that stands out?
For me, it is their engagement with the questions
that matter (now, and in all the imagined golden
ages we have ever enjoyed), questions to do
with dwelling, questions to do with our responsibilities
to the earth, to others and to ourselves, questions
that are at once philosophical and everyday,
(as all the interesting questions are). What
is also significant is that these poets are
working within a tradition as rich and rewarding
as any in literary history, a tradition that
runs back through a line of fine, and sometimes
under-appreciated poets of previous generations,
to the great American originals, to Whitman,
to Dickinson, to Melville, to Thoreau. This
great tradition - this 'American Idiom' - is
one the wonders of the last century, to be marvelled
at, and to be enjoyed; but as we recognise the
tradition, we should not overlook what is being
done now, poetry that is often demanding, sometimes
puzzling, poetry that not only continues, but
extends the tradition, making it, and the world,
new, moment by moment, here and now.
| If
you would like to study American Poetry
Post 1945 further at university undergraduate
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http://www.litencyc.com
- The Literary Encyclopedia project
http://www.ausablepress.com
- The Ausable Press, a fine North American
press
http://www.poets.org
- The Academy of American Poets
http://www.poetrysociety.org
- The Poetry Society of America
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/
- The Library of Congress Poetry
Pages
http://www.siue.edu/ENGLISH/SW/
- Sou'wester Magazine (an excellent
midwestern magazine)
My colleague David Williams also recommends
the following sites:
http://www.nationalpoetry.org/npa/index.html
National Poetry Association. More avant-garde
than both the Poetry Society of America and
the Academy of American Poets, the NPA is also
quirkier.
http://www.favoritepoem.org/
The Favorite Poem Project was founded by American
poet-laureate Robert Pinksky in 1997. The very
interesting video section features Americans
(both famous "regular") reading their
favorite poem and explaining their choice.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets.htm
Large and valuable collection of resources on
more than 150 modern American poets, including
John Ashbery, Rita Dove, Robert Lowell, Sharon
Olds, and many more. Excerpts from poems, essays,
interviews and criticism.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/
Americanpoems.com offers detailed biography,
critical summary, bibliography, and poetry culled
from various published sources, from Philip
Freneau (1752-1832) to Joseph Mayo Wristen (1951-).
including Sylvia Plath, Shel Silverstein and
James Tate.
http://www.poetspath.com/
The Museum of American Poetics. Idiosyncratic
collection of "multimedia
investications that trace the finest in original
American Poetics".
http://www.aprweb.org/issues/current/
The latest issue of the American Poetry Review,
with some teaser content.
http://capa.conncoll.edu/
The Contemporary American Poetry Archive - an
archive of out-of-print poetry collections and
prose/poetry combinations.
http://users.ap.net/~chenae/natpoem.html
Native American Poetry
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