The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised [Paperback]

Donald Allen (Editor), George F. Butterick (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 1994

This anthology includes many of the major poets to have emerged and gained preeminence since World War II, and whose writing reflects an entirely new way of looking at and structuring reality. United by their "postmodernist" concerns with spontaneity, "instantism," formal and syntactic flexibility, and the revelation of both the creator and the process through the writing itself, these 38 poets represent very diverse strains of an essential American individualism. Included are many of the poets whose work first gained widespread national attention with the 1960 publication of The New American Poetry: Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, and others. Among the poets included here for the first time are Anne Waldman, Diane di Prima, Ed Sanders, Jerome Rothenberg, and James Koller. In addition to a new preface by Allen and Butterick, the book provides autobiographical notes of all the poets and listings of their major works.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

This anthology includes many of the major poets to have emerged and gained pre-eminence since World War II, and whose writing reflects not only the significant changes in this nation's postwar history, and the coming to grips with a nuclear age, but also an entirely new way of looking at and structuring reality. United by their "postmodernist" concerns with spontaneity, "instantism," formal and syntactic flexibility, and the revelation of both the creator and the process through the writing itself, these 38 poets represent very diverse strains of an essential American individualism. Included are many of the poets whose work first gained widespread national attention with the 1960 publication of The New American Poetry: Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, and others. Among the poets included here for the first time are Anne Waldman, Diane di Prima, Ed Sanders, Jerome Rothenberg, and James Koller. In addition to a new preface by Allen and Butterick, the book provides autobiographical notes of all the poets and listings of their major works.

Donald Allen has edited many books, among them The New American Poetry, The Poetics of the New American Poetry, and the collected poems of Edward Dorn, Frank O'Hara, and Lew Welch.

George Butterick is Curator of Literary Archives at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, and has recently published a guide to the Maximus Poems of Charles Olson.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 14, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802150357
• ISBN-13: 978-0802150356
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,292,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book to start your study of postmodern American poetry, July 25, 2011

By 

Jean A. Jones (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised (Paperback)

If you were looking to start your study of American postmodern poetry, this is it. For the most part, the two main movements of American post modern poetry starting in the 1950s consist of the Beat poets including Allen Ginsberg, and many of the poets in the San Francisco scene, and the Black Mountain school poets from Black Mountain college in North Carolina, and their followers with their leaders being the two main poetry teachers at Black Mountain college, Robert Creeley and Charles Olson. I would recommend this book if you wanted to start reading those poets and their followers and how they affect American poetry today.