Modern Poetry after Modernism

Book Description
Robert Lowell and many who followed in his personal, reflective style, such as John Berryman, W. S. Merwin, and Adrienne Rich, have been seen as breaking with the modernist influence of T. S. Eliot and the New Critics. But as James Longenbach maintains in his fascinating new book, this "breakthrough" narrative no longer makes good sense, due to our changing conceptions of what constitutes modernism and its New Critical values, and because our view of postmodernism has grown in complexity and nuance. With a more supple understanding of poetry after modernism, Longenbach contends, conventional divisions such as those between an apparently avant-garde poet like John Ashbery and an apparently conservative poet like Richard Wilbur fail to seem so supportable. Longenbach offers a controversial and wide-ranging account of the past forty years of American poetry, establishing vivid continuities among diverse poets and allowing for fuller appreciation of women poets from Elizabeth Bishop to May Swenson, Amy Clampitt, and Jorie Graham. An accomplished poet in his own right, Longenbach outlines a vital new history of American poetry since World War II, offering readers a fresh way to experience the variety of poetries written in our time.


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In this book, James Longenbach develops a fresh approach to major American poetry after modernism. Rethinking the influential "breakthrough" narrative, the oft-told story of post-modern poets throwing off their modernist shackles in the 1950s, Longenbach offers a more nuanced perspective. Reading a diverse range of poets - John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Amy Clampitt, Jorie Graham, Richard Howard, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Robert Pinsky, and Richard Wilbur - Longenbach reveals that American poets since mid-century have not so much disowned their modernist past as extended elements of modernism that other readers have suppressed or neglected to see. In the process, Longenbach allows readers to experience the wide variety of poetries written in our time - without asking us to choose between them.


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