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POSTMODERNISM The prefix post- signifies many
meanings as a result of modernism, the
development of modernism, the denial of
modernism, the rejection of modernism. The
modern is always historically at war with what
comes immediately before it. In this same sense,
modern is always post-something. Modo meaning
just now, so postmodern means after just now,
which is weird. Postmodernism starts in
architecture in the 1960s.
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1. Language as autonomous reality words and
things dont correspond to each other. 2.
Impossibility and futility of writing in the same
old forms. 3. Originality of the work of art is
questioned John Barths essay The Literature of
Exhaustion published in 1967 announces the
used-upness of certain forms or the felt
exhaustion of certain possibilities. 4.
Playgiarism Intertextuality rewriting. 5.
There is nothing outside of the text.
(Derrida) 6. Reader as recreator of a text. 7.
Multiplicity (feminisim, ethnic literature).
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Michael Graves, Disney Studios, Burbank, CA 1990

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Claes Oldenburg Clothespin, 1976Cor-Ten and
stainless steelsCentre Square Plaza,
Philadelphia
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Claes Oldenburg Soft Toilet, 1966
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INTRODUCTION TO POSTMODERN POETRY By the end of
the 1940s, with the death of the great Irish poet
W. B.Yeats in 1939, and the immigration to the
United States of W. H. Auden, the center of
poetic activity in the English language had
changed from Britain to America. Denise Levertov
later described her move from England to the
United States in 1947 as a discovery of the
vitality of life and speech in American poetry.
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American poetry flourished in the late 1940s
because of a new confidence in native literary
traditions derived from the achievements of the
early modernists in the first half of the
century 1. T.S. Eliot and E. Pound continued to
dominate the literary scene in the 40s with their
establishment of free verse. 2. The work of
William Carlos Williams became influential for
younger poets after the war. For postwar poets
like Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, and Robert
Creely, Williamss work offered a poetic
alternative to Eliots version of modernism. 3.
Langston Hughes had value for the black poets and
for the representation of ghetto life. 4.
Wallace Stevens also emerged as an influence in
the 40s and 50s. Stevenss meditative style
became important to many poets, such as John
Ashbery.
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Postwar poets began to claim their independence
from the modernist writers in poetic manifestos.
One of the most provocative of these was Charles
Olsons Projective Verse. The word postmodern
was first used by Charles Olson in 1951. It
suggests an experimental approach to composition.
While the modernist writers believed that
learning meant control (Eliots stress on
tradition), postmodernists have accepted a lack
of order as the cultural norm. Postmodernism is a
process of resistance to mainstream ideology.
Postmodernism involves the decentering of
literary and cultural authority (death of the
author reader creating his own meaning), the
dissolution of traditional boundaries like those
between high and popular cultures (Yeats and
Eliot wrote for the elite). It offers the
pleasures of uncertainty, diversity, change and
no closure.
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In the 50s and 60s poets started to appear in
public gatherings in the US. Earlier poets had
been isolated from the public Pound, Eliot, and
H.D. lived in Europe Wallace Stevens was a
businessman William Carlos Williams was a
doctor. Poetry readings had been rare. After the
war, writers conferences and workshops,
recordings, and interviews became more common. In
the 60s and 70s readings became less formal held
not in auditoriums but in coffehouses and bars.
The purpose of these casual readings was to
introduce new poets, or new poems by an already
recognised poet. In this period poetry extended
its subject matter to more explicit and extreme
areas of autobiography insanity, sex, divorce,
alcoholism. Ex Berrymans Dream Songs showed
his alcoholism and struggle with insanity
Ginsbergs Howl celebrated his homosexuality.
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Some of the poetry of this period was political.
Ginsberg, Levertov and Rich wrote poems against
American participation in the Vietnam War. The
assasinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin
Luther King affected poets. The important freedom
movements of the 60s advocating the rights of
the minorty groups, womens liberation, and gay
rights had supporters among the poets. Black
poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka
who had success with white audiences, turned to
address blacks. They experimented in bringing out
the distinctive speech rhythms of Black English
they stressed the oral values of verse its
openness to blues. Their work helped to define
the increasing importance of oral traditions in
the poetry of the 70s and 80s, and forced the
opening up of American poetry to other
non-European traditions, including those of
Native American societies, the Carribean, Mexico,
and Latin America. Older definitions of social
norms based upon race and ethnicity were falling.
Multiplicity of cultures, minority writers.
American poets of the past 20 years have been
redefining what constitutes America.
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At the same time the feminist movement made many
poets aware of the need for a poetic language to
explore the experiences of women who were
silenced or unrepresented in literature. Ex
Richs Diving into the Wreck suggests the
necessity to try what lies beneath the surface
and to form a language of shared experience.
Other women poets were Plath, Levertov and
Sexton.
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PROJECTIVISTS / BLACK MOUNTAIN POETRY Charles
Olson Robert Creeley Robert Duncan Denise
Levertov Critics talked of organic form, using
free verse which took its length of line or its
visual form on the page from the poets intense
feelings at the moment of composition. Field
Composition instead of closed form Improvising
line by line, syllable by syllable One
perception must immediately and directly lead to
a further perception.
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CONFESSIONAL POETRY John Berryman Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton Adrienne Rich They wrote
autobiographical, melancholic poems. They have
sought in their lives the key moments of pain
rather than pleasure. Three of them Berryman,
Plath, Sexton committed suicide.
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BEAT MOVEMENT (exhaustion, beatitude,
improvisation) Allen Ginsberg Jack
Kerouac Gregory Corso Gary Snyder Lawrence
Ferlinghetti Its roots are in the poetry of
Blake, Whitman, and William Carlos
Williams. Beat writing is public, direct,
performative, ecstatic, and oral. Ginsbergs
poetry is vivid, direct, personal, and
declamatory.
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NEW YORK SCHOOL John Ashbery Frank
OHara Kenneth Koch Inspired by the works of
Abstract Expressionist painters (Jackson Pollock,
Willem de Kooning) Personist poetry of OHara
speaks with immediacy and directness of everyday
experience, in everyday language. They admire
wit, urbanity, and offhanded (easy going)
elegance. New York School poetry reveals a
fondness for parody and pop culture. Ashbery
expresses indeterminacy in his poetry which means
the conditionality of truth, a compositional
tendency away from finality and closure, the text
is in a state of unrest or undecidability.
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Jackson Pollock (American) Autumn Rhythm (Number
30), 1950 Abstract Expressionism is a form of art
in which the artist expresses himself purely
through the use of form and color. It is form of
non-representational, or non-objective, art,
which means that there are no concrete objects
represented.
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