collectionAfter We Lost Our Wayselected for the tenth
annual National Poetry Series in 1989.
Women in the 1960’s, many caught up in the new
feminism or influenced by the counterculture, had
realized their own marginalization in the literary
world. In the following decade, a new form of femi-
nist criticism developed that challenged the aca-
demic canon and argued that literary standards
were culturally formed, not universal and timeless.
By the time Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s
Norton Anthology of Literature by Womencame out in
1985, a new tradition of women’s literature had been
established. Among prominent women poets of the
decade were Silko, Erdrich, Dove, Angelou, Song,
Mona Van Duyn, Adrienne Rich, Louise Gluck, May
Swenson, Sharon Olds, Jorie Graham, Amy Clam-
pitt, and Maxine Kumin. The appointment of Gwen-
dolyn Brooks, who had been the first African Ameri-
can to win the Pulitzer Prize, as U.S. poet laureate
for 1985-1986 advanced the prominence of both
women and minorities. Brooks advocated the cause
of bringing poetry to the inner city by promoting po-
etry classes and competitions for young people.
New Styles Rap poetry grew from the African tra-
dition of the storyteller in tribal society, who memo-
rized the history of his tribe and recited it to music.
When Africans came to the Western Hemisphere as
slaves beginning in the 1500’s, they brought this tra-
dition of talking to a beat with them, and it eventu-
ally grew into talking blues and then to hip-hop and
rap. In the 1970’s, rap was associated with protest,
drugs, and life on the street, but by the 1980’s, many
rap artists sought mainstream success by veering
away from political rhetoric to light, entertaining,
and more universal themes. The decade also saw the
emergence of intellectual, political rap as a viable
commodity, however, especially in the work of Public
Enemy. The 1980’s saw female rappers rise to answer
their male counterparts. Rap became a successful
movement by melding poetry with music even more
obviously than other popular musical genres.
Poetry oriented toward performance proliferated
in the 1980’s with the rising popularity of mixed-
media performances that included choreography,
video, and space-ge technology. Prominent among
these poetry performances was the poetry slam, a
competitive event in which poets gathered to per-
form in such venues as alternative art galleries, cafés,
and bookstores. Their performances were scored by
members of the audience, and the highest-scoring
poet or team of poets was declared the winner. Some
of the poets read their work, some recited from
memory, and some were accompanied by music.
Rap was sometimes featured, but poets also per-
formed many different styles of poetry in slams, in-
cluding such traditional forms as sonnets and haiku.
Slams were usually marked by audience enthusiasm
and participation.
Impact Poetry was transformed during the 1980’s.
By the end of the decade, traditional forms and ideas
were no longer as important to poets as they had
been, and poetry seemed more relevant than it had
been previously in the century. Many believed writ-
ing poetry was a way to assert one’s individualism in
the face of an increasingly uniform culture. By the
1980’s, poetry was decentralized, idiosyncratic, and
often highly experimental. At the same time, an ac-
tive school of new formalism featured a return to
form, rhyme, and meter, restoring the lapidary ef-
fect of poetry. Although the new formalist poets
worked in traditional forms, they experimented with
these forms to make them new and relevant to con-
temporary society.
Further Reading
Darcy, Philip, and David Jauss, eds.Strong Measures:
Contemporar y American Poetr y in Traditional Forms.
New York: Harper, 1986. Showcases the new for-
malism, including examples of seventy-five tradi-
tional forms written by nearly two hundred poets.
Myers, Jack, and Roger Weingarten, eds.New Ameri-
can Poets of the 80’s.Green Harbor, Mass.: Wam-
peter, 1984. Anthology of work by sixty-five poets,
including some promising poets whom the edi-
tors aim to introduce and some good poets who
have not been included in previous anthologies.
Ostriker, Alicia Suskin.Stealing the Language: The
Emergence of Women’s Poetr y in America.Boston:
Beacon Press,1986. Extensive, feminist analysis
of the way language and themes developed in
women’s poetry.
Sheila Golburgh JohnsonSee also Book publishing; Children’s literature;
Erdrich, Louise; Hip-hop and rap; Keillor, Garrison;
Lennon, John; Literature in Canada; Literature in
the United States; Performance art; Public Enemy.The Eighties in America Poetry 765