To Bedlam and Back: The New American Poetry

The New American Poetry.

Donald M. Allen signaled the beginning of a new era in American poetry early in the decade with the publication of his anthology The New American Poetry, 1945-1960 in 1960. In addition to publishing Beat poets from the 1950s such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen included many younger or little-known poets whose approaches sometimes differed radically from the carefully constructed and highly intellectual poetry then favored by most professors and critics.

Against Modernism.

Like most of the new art movements and much of the experimental fiction of the late 1950s and the 1960s, this new poetry was an explicit rejection of modernism, which had dominated the arts in America and Europe since the early decades of the twentieth century. For instance, in his book In Defense of Ignorance (1960) poet Karl Shapiro attacks the influence of modernism on American poetry and criticism,...

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