Literature of the United States

American poetry now

The last thirty years in United States poetry has seen the emergence of a number of groups and trends. It is probably too soon to judge the long-term importance of these, and what follows is merely a brief outline sketch.
The 1970s saw a revival of interest in surrealism, with the most prominent poets working in this field being Andrei Codrescu (born 1946), Russell Edson (born 1935) and Maxine Chernoff (born 1952). Performance poetry also emerged from the Beat and hippie happenings, and the talk-poems of David Antin (born 1932) and ritual events performed by Rothenberg, to become a serious poetic stance which embraces multiculturalism and a range of poets from a multiplicity of cultures. This mirrored a general growth of interest in poetry by African Americans including Gwendolyn Brooks (born 1917), Maya Angelou (born 1928), Ishmael Reed (born 1938) and Nikki Giovanni (born 1943).
The most controversial avant-garde grouping during this period has been the Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, after the magazine that bears that name). Language-centered writing is extremely theoretical, discounting speech as the basis for verse, and dedicated to questioning the referentiality of language and the dominance of the sentence as the basic unit of syntax. The idea appears to be that language when stripped of its normal associative and denotative meanings becomes closer to the source of language and may actually provide insights that might not otherwise be possible. Those critical of the Language movement point out that taken to its logical conclusion this abandonment of sense and context creates a poetry that could be just as well be written by the proverbial infinite sized room full of monkeys with an infinite number of word processors.
The Language poets movement includes a very high proportion of women, which mirrors another general trend; the rediscovery and promotion of poetry written both by earlier and contemporary women poets. In addition to Language poets, a number of the most prominent African American poets to emerge are women, and other prominent women writers include Adrienne Rich (born 1929) and Amy Gerstler (born 1956).
The Language group also contains an unusually high proportion of academics. Poetry has tended to move more and more into the campus, with a growth in creative writing and poetics programs providing an equal growth in the number of teaching posts available to practicing poets. This increased professionalization and abundance of academic presses combined with a lack of any coherent process for critical evaluation is one of the clearest developments and one which seems likely to have unpredictable consequences for the future of poetry in the United States.
The 1980s also saw the emergence of a group of poets who became known as the New Formalists. These poets, who included Molly Peacock, Brad Leithauser, Dana Gioia and Marilyn Hacker, write in traditional forms and have declared that this return to rhyme and more fixed meters is the new avant-garde. Critics of the New Formalists have compared their traditionalism with the conservative politics of the Reagan era. It is intended as an insult.
Many poets (A growing group of poets loosely called Outlaw Poets or Small Press Poets) ignore what they see as the extremes and academic elitism of the self-proclaimed avant-garde of both poetic groups, choosing to use both traditional and experimental approaches to their work.
Concurrently, a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith was growing bored with increasingly esoteric academic poetry readings. In 1984, at the Get Me High Lounge, Smith devised the format that has come to be known as slam poetry. A competitive poetry performance, poetry slam opened the door for a new generation of writers, spoken word performers, and audiences by emphasizing a style of writing that is edgy, topical, and easily understood.
Poetry slam has produced noted poets like Alix Olson, Taylor Mali, and Saul Williams, as well as inspired hundreds of open mics.