American Poetry after Modernism The Power of the Word

Albert Gelpi's American Poetry after Modernism is a study of sixteen major American poets of the postwar period, from Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich. Gelpi argues that a distinctly American poetic tradition was solidified in the later half of the twentieth century, thus severing it from British conventions. In Gelpi's view, what distinguishes the American poetic tradition from the British is that at the heart of the American endeavor is a primary questioning of function and medium. The chief paradox in American poetry is the lack of a tradition that requires answering and redefining - redefining what it means to be a poet and, likewise, how the words of a poem create meaning, offer insight into reality, and answer the ultimate questions of living. Through chapters devoted to specific poets, Gelpi explores this paradox by providing an original and insightful reading of late-twentieth-century American poetry.

1. Twentieth-century poetics: an overview; 2. The language of crisis: Robert Lowell and John Berryman; 3. The language of flux: Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery; 4. The language of incarnation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Everson; 5. The language of witness: Adrienne Rich; 6. The language of vision: Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan; 7. The language of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: Robert Creeley, Michael Palmer, Lyn Hejinian, Robert Grenier, Susan Howe, and Fanny Howe.

Albert Gelpi is Professor Emeritus of American Literature at Stanford University, California. His previous books include Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet (1971), The Tenth Muse (Cambridge, 1991), and A Coherent Splendor (Cambridge, 1988). Gelpi has also edited the work of, and written criticism on, a wide range of poets, including Wallace Stevens, Robinson Jeffers, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, and William Everson. The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov (2003), co-edited with Robert Bertholf, won an award from the MLA as the best scholarly edition of a literary correspondence. Gelpi continues to teach in the Stanford Continuing Studies Program.