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This book examines Donald M. Allen's crucially influential poetry anthology The New American Poetry, 1945-1960 from the perspectives of American Cold War nationalism and literary transnationalism, considering how the anthology expresses and challenges Cold War norms, claiming post-war Anglophone poetic innovation for the United States and reflecting the conservative American society of the 1950s. Examining the crossroads of politics, social life, and literature during the Cold War, this book puts Allen's anthology into its historical context and reveals how the editor was influenced by the volatile climate of nationalism and politics that pervaded every aspect of American life during the Cold War. Reconsidering the dramatic influence that Allen's anthology has had on the way we think about and anthologize American poetry, and recontextualizing The New American Poetry as a document of the Cold War, this study not only helps us come to a more accurate understanding of how the anthology came into being, but also encourages new ways of thinking about all of Anglophone poetry, from the twentieth century and today.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Raw Americans: The Persistence of The New American Poetry's National, Binary Model of Anglophone Poetry.- 3. Behind Enemy Lines: The New American Poetry as a Cold War Anthology.- 4. The Community of Love: The New American Poetry and Revolutionary Relationships in Cold War America.- 5. This Thing Is Most National: Nationalism and Assimilation in The New American Poetry.- 6. Post-War to Post-Truth: Reassessing the American Avant-garde Canon.- 7. Conclusion: The Slow Collapse of the Formalist Framework
About the author
Stephan Delbos is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University, Prague. He has published several volumes of poetry and translation. In 2020 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Plymouth, Massachusetts. His most recent book is
Small Talk (2021).
Report
"The New American Poetry and Cold War Nationalism, Delbos uniquely contextualizes Allen's anthology within America's postwar, socio-political milieu caught up in dramatic, unrelenting reinvention. The shortcomings-not merely of Allen's anthology or The New Poets of England and America but rather all of America as it entered into a new form of geopolitical struggle-are spelled out meticulously." (Burt Kimmelman, Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 47 (1), 2023)
