The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry since 1945

This Companion casts post-1945 American poetry as a coherent literary movement, making the period's most difficult offerings comprehensible and accessible.

Offering critical insight into the most dynamic American poetry from 1945 to 2010, this Companion explores the broad history that seminal figures like Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Elizabeth Bishop and Gwendolyn Brooks shared with experimental and popular forms like language writing, sound poetry and rap.The extent to which American poetry reinvented itself after World War II is a testament to the changing social, political and economic landscape of twentieth-century American life. Registering an important shift in the way scholars contextualize modern and contemporary American literature, this Companion explores how American poetry has documented and, at times, helped propel the literary and cultural revolutions of the past sixty-five years. This Companion sheds new light on the Beat, Black Arts and other movements while examining institutions that govern poetic practice in the United States today. The text also introduces seminal figures like Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery and Gwendolyn Brooks while situating them alongside phenomena such as the 'academic poet' and popular forms such as spoken word and rap, revealing the breadth of their shared history. Students, scholars and readers will find this Companion an indispensable guide to post-war and late twentieth-century American poetry.