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Course Description

Summary

This course will survey the evolution of, and revolutions in, the American poetry from 1950 to the present by exploring the work of various aesthetically and culturally linked groups of American poets that came to prominence in the decades following the Second World War: the Beats, the Confessional Poets, the Black Mountain School, the San Francisco Renaissance, the New York School, Deep Image poets, the Black Arts Movement, New Formalists, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. As we wade into the impassioned debates surrounding each of these movements to better understand what precisely constitutes a "school" of poetry, we will read poems, manifestos, and essays representative of the aesthetic of each movement, and trace connections these diverse currents in American poetry have with one another. The course will conclude by examining various new schools and movements that contemporary critics have labeled, including Elliptical poetry, documentary or "investigative" poetics, and The New Sincerity. Our course texts will include Paul Hoover's anthology Postmodern American Poetry and several collections of poetry. In addition to two papers and brief weekly critical responses, students will be expected to attempt writing four mimetics, including a Confessional poem, a New York School poem, a Deep Image poem, and a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poem.