Black Mountain Poets
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Black Mountain Poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid-20th-century American ''avant-garde'' or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Background Although it lasted only twenty-three years (1933–1956) and enrolled fewer than 1,200 students, Black Mountain College was one of the most fabled experimental institutions in art education and practice. It launched a remarkable number of the artists who spearheaded the avant-garde in the America of the 1960s. It boasted an extraordinary curriculum in the visual, literary, and performing arts as evidenced by some of the artists and teachers listed below. Among the literature teachers and students were Robert Creeley, Fielding Dawson, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Paul Goodman, Francine du Plessix Gray, Hilda Morley, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards, Arthur Penn, and John Wieners. Projective verse In 1950, Charles Olson published his seminal essay, '' Projective Verse''. In this, ...
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Poetry Of The United States
American poetry refers to the poetry of the United States. It arose first as efforts by American colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the Thirteen Colonies (although a strong oral tradition often likened to poetry already existed among Native American societies). Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists' work relied on contemporary English models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language ''avant-garde''. Much of the American poetry published between 1910 and 1945 remains lost in the pages of small circulation political periodicals, particularly the ones on the far left, destroyed by librarians during the 1950s McCarthy era. Modernist ...
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John Wieners
John Joseph Wieners (January 6, 1934 – March 1, 2002) was an American poet. Early life Born in Milton, Massachusetts, Wieners attended St. Gregory Elementary School in Dorchester, Massachusetts and Boston College High School. From 1950 to 1954, he studied at Boston College, where he earned his A.B. On September 11, 1954, he heard Charles Olson read at the Charles Street Meeting House on Beacon Hill during Hurricane Edna. He decided to enroll at Black Mountain College where he studied under Olson and Robert Duncan from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he took a job sweeping floors at a popular Beat hangout in North Beach, where he joined the artistic community in the city. There he became close to painter Robert LaVigne and the collage artist Wallace Berman who was involved in the Beat Movement. He then worked as an actor and stage manager at the Poet's Theater in Cambridge, and began to edit ''Measure'', releasing three issues over the next several years. From 1958 to 1960 Wieners liv ...
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British Literature
British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles. The article Literature in the other languages of Britain focuses on the literatures written in the other languages that are, and have been, used in Britain. There are also articles on these various literatures: Latin literature in Britain, Anglo-Norman, Cornish, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Latin, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, etc. Irish writers have played an important part in the development of literature in Englan ...
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Language Poets
The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scalapino, Stephen Rodefer, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Bob Perelman, Rae Armantrout, Alan Davies, Carla Harryman, Clark Coolidge, Hannah Weiner, Susan Howe, James Sherry, and Tina Darragh. Language poetry emphasizes the reader's role in bringing meaning out of a work. It plays down expression, seeing the poem as a construction in and of language itself. In more theoretical terms, it challenges the "natural" presence of a speaker behind the text; and emphasizes the disjunction and the materiality of the signifier.Saroj Koirala (2016),Linking Words with the World: The Language Poetry Mission, ''Tribhuvan University Journal'', vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 175-190; here: p. 179. . Retrieved ...
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The New American Poetry 1945–1960
''The New American Poetry 1945–1960'' is a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen and published in 1960. It aimed to pick out the "third generation" of American modernist poets, and included quite a number of poems fresh from the little magazines of the late 1950s. In the longer term it attained a classic status, with critical approval and continuing sales. It was reprinted in 1999. As of 2022, Edward Field and Gary Snyder are the only contributors still living. Overview In 1958, Allen began work on ''The New American Poetry'' anthology. Following the Pound/ Williams tradition, Allen hoped to present the range of experimental writing produced in the United States since the Second World War. The project took two years to complete and required extensive correspondence with poets, editors, and literary agents. The book was finally published in 1960, and, in addition to the poems, included a brief ''Preface'' by Allen, position-statements by some of the contributors, biographical ...
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Donald Allen
Donald Merriam Allen (Iowa, 1912 – San Francisco, August 29, 2004) was an American editor, publisher and translator of American literature. He is best known for his project ''The New American Poetry 1945-1960'' (1960), one of the anthologies of contemporary American writing he released. Early life Allen began his working life as a Japanese translator within the US military, serving during WWII. Career After his service ended, Allen became an editor at Grove Press, where he worked for 16 years. He was one of the first translators of the Romanian-French Absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco, and Allen's 1958 volume ''Four Plays of Eugène Ionesco'' helped to introduce the playwright to American audiences in the 1960s. Along with editing works by Lew Welch, Allen edited Frank O'Hara, including ''Collected Poems'' (1971; 1991) and ''Selected Poems'' (1974). He is referred to directly in O'Hara's "Personal Poem" which is in '' Lunch Poems'', a book Allen also edited. O'Har ...
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Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's ''Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' (1959), and Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.Charters (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.Ann Charters, ''int ...
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ...
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Jonathan Williams (poet)
Jonathan Williams (March 8, 1929 – March 16, 2008) was an American poet, publisher, essayist, and photographer. He is known as the founder of The Jargon Society, which has published poetry, experimental fiction, photography, and folk art since 1951. Overview Williams was born in Asheville, North Carolina to Thomas Benjamin and Georgette Williams, and raised in Washington, DC. He attended St. Albans School in Washington, and then Princeton University, before dropping out to pursue the arts. Williams studied painting with Karl Knaths at the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC, and engraving and graphic arts with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York, followed by a semester at the Chicago Institute of Design. In 1951, he arrived at Black Mountain College to study photography with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. At Black Mountain College, Williams met and was influenced by the College's rector, Charles Olson. Also in 1951, Williams founded Jargon Books (later ...
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Denise Levertov
Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Early life and influences Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni (1985) ''Contemporary Women Poets''. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Adelaide (née Spooner-Jones) Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales. Her father, Paul Levertoff, had been a teacher at Leipzig University and as a Russian Hasidic Jew was held under house arrest during the First World War as an 'enemy alien' by virtue of his ethnicity. He emigrated to the UK and became an Anglican priest after converting to Christianity. In the mistaken belief that he would want to preach in a Jewish neighbourhood, he was housed in Ilford, within reach of a parish in Shoreditch, in East London. His daughter wrote, "My father's Hasidic ancestry, his being steeped in Jewish and Christian scholarship and mysticism, his ...
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Joel Oppenheimer
Joel Lester Oppenheimer (Jacob Hammer) (February 18, 1930 – October 11, 1988) was an American poet associated with both the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. He was the first director of the St. Marks Poetry Project (1966–68). Though a poet, Oppenheimer was perhaps better known for his columns in the ''Village Voice'' from 1969 to 1984. Life and work Oppenheimer was born in Yonkers, New York, attended Cornell University for one year in 1948, spent less than one semester at the University of Chicago, and in 1950 enrolled at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At Black Mountain, he studied with Paul Goodman and poet Charles Olson, became friends with Fielding Dawson and Ed Dorn, and worked in the school's print shop. In his earliest poetry, Oppenheimer shows clearly the influence of William Carlos Williams, but he soon developed his own style. While at Black Mountain, Oppenheimer met and married his first wife, Rena Furlong. He left the school in January 19 ...
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Paul Blackburn (US Poet)
Paul Blackburn (November 24, 1926 – September 13, 1971) was an American poet. He influenced contemporary literature through his poetry, translations and the encouragement and support he offered to fellow poets. Biography Blackburn was born in St. Albans, Vermont. His parents, William Gordon Blackburn and Frances Frost (also a poet, novelist and author of children's books), separated when Blackburn was three and a half. Thereafter, he was cared for primarily by his maternal grandparents on their farm in St. Albans until he was fourteen, when his mother took him to New York City to live with her in Greenwich Village. He began writing poetry in his late teens under her encouragement. Shortly after enrolling in New York University in 1945, Blackburn joined the army hoping to be sent overseas. The war ended soon after however, and he spent the rest of his service as a laboratory technician in Colorado. In 1947 he returned to NYU, transferring in 1949 to the University of Wisconsi ...
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