120 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
the imaginative power of poetry in the contemporary period and its potential
to entertain, enlighten, move, and transform audiences.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH
- Poetry since 1970 has been labeled “postconfessional.” In general, American
poetry published after 1945 or the end of World War II tends to be more
personal than poetry published roughly between 1900 and 1945. Although
poetry after 1970 tends to move away from the shocking self-revelation
and articulation of individual psychological despair of the generation of
poets labeled “confessional” (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John Berryman,
and Robert Lowell), contemporary poets continue to place a premium on
individual experience and expression while tempering the excesses and
despair found in the work of the previous generation. In his introduction
to The Post-Confessionals: Conversations with American Poets of the Eighties,
Stan Sanvel Ruben delineates differences between confessional and post-
confessional poets: “While it is often highly personal experience that first
prompts these poets to poetry [.. .] the general thrust is nearly always away
from the personal and toward something sensed to be larger.” As with the
work of the previous generation of poets, their work is a “mix of personal
and public.” The Post-Confessionals provides a useful working definition
for students interested in examining the ways the self and subjectivity are
depicted. Students might focus on poets interviewed in the collection or on
others such as Rita Dove, Li-Young Lee, Sharon Olds, Natasha Trethewey,
and/or Franz Wright, exploring the ways these poets use personal history
in their poetry, and how their approaches vary. How do their works merge
“personal and public”? How does a particular poem move beyond the self to
address larger issues related to history and society? - American poetry is sometimes characterized by regional differences, exem-
plified in the work of poets as different as Ted Kooser, who writes about
the landscape of rural Nebraska, and Mary Oliver, who writes about the
spiritual and natural landscapes of Cape Cod and more specifically of the
area around Provincetown, Massachusetts. Kooser, who served as poet lau-
reate in 2004 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for Delights and Shadows
(2004), writes in a deliberately plain style, believing that his words should
be accessible to common readers and should never require the use of a
dictionary or reference works. Oliver, one of the best-selling writers among
contemporary poets, won the Pulitzer for American Primitive (1983), which
might be described as a book of spiritual geography. Students interested in
geography and poetry might ask the question of how regional differences
influence the work of Oliver and Kooser, and alternately, how these poets
delineate regional differences in their work. - Since 1970 there have been various efforts to move poetry from academic
institutions and to make poetry more accessible and available to the general
public. Poetry-writing groups and workshops encourage people to try their
hand at writing poetry. The proliferation of audio and visual recordings