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 Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

Background

Although it lasted only twenty-three years (1933–1956) and enrolled fewer than 1,200 students,

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 The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

in the America of the 1960s. It boasted an extraordinary curriculum in the

visual The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (th ...

literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

, and performing arts as evidenced by some of the artists and teachers listed below. Among the literature teachers and students were

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...

Fielding Dawson Fielding Dawson (August 2, 1930 – January 5, 2002, aged 71) was a Beat-era author of short stories and novels, and a student at Black Mountain College. He was also a painter and collagist whose works were seen in several books of poetry and ...

Ed Dorn Edward Merton Dorn (April 2, 1929 – December 10, 1999, aged 70) was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is '' ''Gunslinger'. Overview Dorn was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. ...

, Robert Duncan,

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...

Francine du Plessix Gray Francine du Plessix Gray (September 25, 1930 – January 13, 2019), was a French-American Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer and literary critic. Early life and education She was born on September 25, 1930, in Warsaw, Poland, where her father ...

, Hilda Morley,

Charles Olson Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...

, M. C. Richards,

Arthur Penn Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American director and producer of film, television and theater. Closely associated with the American New Wave, Penn directed critically acclaimed films throughout the 19 ...

, and

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 195 ...

Projective verse

1950 Events January * January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed. * January 5 – Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 crashes in a snowstorm. All 19 ...

published his seminal essay, '' Projective Verse''. In this, he called for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should reflect exactly the content of the poem. This form was to be based on the line, and each line was to be a unit of breath and of utterance. The content was to consist of "one perception immediately and directly (leading) to a further perception". This essay was to become a kind of ''de facto'' manifesto for the Black Mountain poets. One of the effects of narrowing the unit of structure in the poem down to what could fit within an utterance was that the Black Mountain poets developed a distinctive style of poetic diction (e.g. "yr" for "your").

Principal figures

In addition to Olson, the poets most closely associated with Black Mountain include Larry Eigner, Robert Duncan,

, Paul Blackburn, Hilda Morley,

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). T ...

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, Ess ...

, Jonathan Williams and

. Creeley worked as a teacher and editor of the '' Black Mountain Review'' for two years, moving to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in 1957. There, he acted as a link between the Black Mountain poets and the

Beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery (c ...

s, many of whom he had published in the review. Also, the appearance in 1960 of

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 anthologi ...

's anthology ''

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 magaz ...

'' (which divides the poets included in its pages into various ''schools'') was crucial: it established a legacy and promoted the influence of the Black Mountain poets worldwide.

Legacy

Apart from their strong interconnections with the Beats, the Black Mountain poets influenced the course of later American poetry via their importance for the poets later identified with the

Language School A language school is a school where one studies a foreign language. Classes at a language school are usually geared towards, for example, communicative competence in a foreign language. Language learning in such schools typically supplements fo ...

. They were also important for the development of innovative

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

poetry since the 1960s, as evidenced by such poets as Tom Raworth and J. H. Prynne. In Canadian poetry, Canada, the Vancouver-based ''TISH'' group, including George Bowering and Daphne Marlatt, were heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets. Modern projectivist poets include Charles Potts.

References

External links