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American poetry refers to thepoetry of theUnited States. It arose first as efforts by American colonists to add their voices toEnglish poetry in the 17th century, well before theconstitutional unification of theThirteen Colonies (although a strongoral tradition often likened to poetry already existed amongNative American societies).[1] Most of the early colonists' work was similar to contemporary English models ofpoetic form,diction, andtheme. However, in the 19th century, an Americanidiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century,poets likeWalt Whitman were winning an enthusiastic audience abroad and had joined the English-languageavant-garde.
Much of the American poetry published between 1910 and 1945 remains lost in the pages of small circulation political periodicals, particularly the ones on the far left, destroyed by librarians during the 1950s McCarthy era.[2]Modernist poets likeEzra Pound andT.S. Eliot (who was awarded theNobel Prize in Literature in 1948) are often cited as creative and influential English-language poets of the first half of the 20th century.[3] African American and women poets were published and read widely in the same period but were often somewhat prejudicially marginalized. By the 1960s, theBeat Movement andBlack Mountain poets had developed new models for poetry and their contemporaries influenced theBritish Poetry Revival. Towards the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholars placed an increased emphasis on poetry by women,African Americans,Hispanics,Chicanos,Native Americans, and other ethnic groups.Louise Glück andBob Dylan have been awarded theNobel Prize in Literature
AsEngland's contact with the Americas increased after the 1490s, English explorers sometimes included verse with their descriptions of theNew World up through 1650, the year ofAnne Bradstreet's "The Tenth Muse", which was written in America (most likely inIpswich, Massachusetts orNorth Andover, Massachusetts) and printed and distributed inLondon by her brother-in-law, Rev. John Woodbridge. There are 14 such writers who might be termed American poets (they had been to America and to different degrees, written poems or verses about the place). Early examples include a 1616 "testimonial poem" on the "sterling and warlike" character ofCaptain John Smith (in Barbour, ed. "Works") andRev. William Morrell's 1625 "Nova Anglia" or "New England", which is a rhymed catalog of everything fromAmerican weather to his glimpses of Native American women.[4] Then in May 1627,Thomas Morton of Merrymount – aDevon-bornWest Country outdoorsman, attorney at law, man of letters and colonial adventurer – raised amaypole to celebrate and foster success at hisfur-trading settlement and nailed a "Poem" and "Song" (one a densely literary manifesto on how European and Native people came together there and must keep doing so for a successful America; the other a light "drinking song" also full of deeper American implications). These were published in book form along with other examples of Morton's American poetry in "New English Canaan" (1637); and based on the criteria of "First," "American" and "Poetry," they make Morton (and not Anne Bradstreet) America's first poet in English.[5][6]
One of the first recorded poets of theThirteen Colonies was Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672), who remains one of the early knownwomen poets who wrote in English.[7] The poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, many of which remained unpublished until the 20th century.
Edward Taylor (1645–1729) wrote poems expoundingPuritan virtues in a highly wroughtmetaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period.[8]
This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the poetry written in the colonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The earliest "secular" poetry published in New England was bySamuel Danforth in his "almanacks" for 1647–1649,[9] published at Cambridge; these included "puzzle poems" as well as poems on caterpillars, pigeons, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, Danforth never ventured far from a spiritual message.
A distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period wasPhillis Wheatley, aslave whose book "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," was published in 1773. She was one of the best-known poets of her day, at least in the colonies, and her poems were typical of New England culture at the time, meditating on religious andclassical ideas.[10][11]
The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America as fit subject matter for its poets. This trend is most evident in the works ofPhilip Freneau (1752–1832), who is notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude toNative Americans shown in his writings, which had been interpreted as being reflective of his skepticism towardAmerican culture.[12] This late colonial-era poetry follows the means and methods ofPope andGray in the era ofBlake andBurns.[citation needed].Rebecca Hammond Lard (1772–1855), has been described as "the first poet inIndiana".[13][14]
On the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place. As the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative, to say the least. This can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London.[citation needed]
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The first significant poet of the independent United States wasWilliam Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), whose great contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur ofprairies andforests. However, the first internationally acclaimed poet wasHenry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) who nearly surpassedAlfred, Lord Tennyson in international popularity, and, alongsideWilliam Cullen Bryant,John Greenleaf Whittier,James Russell Lowell, andOliver Wendell Holmes Sr.,[15] formed theFireside Poets (known as theSchoolroom orHousehold Poets).[16] The Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-centuryAmerican poets from New England. The name "Fireside Poets" is derived from that popularity: their general adherence to poetic convention (standardforms, regularmeter, andrhymedstanzas) made their body of work particularly suitable for beingmemorized andrecited in school and at home, where it was a source of entertainment for families gathered around the fire. The poets' primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved.[citation needed]
Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century includeRalph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882),Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849),Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862),Sidney Lanier (1842–1881), andJames Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916). As might be expected, the works of all these writers are united by a common search for a distinctive American voice to distinguish them from theirBritish counterparts. To this end, they explored the landscape and traditions of their native country as materials for their poetry.[17]
The most significant example of this tendency may beThe Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow. This poem uses Native American tales collected byHenry Rowe Schoolcraft, who was superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841. Longfellow imitated themeter of the Finnishepic poemKalevala, possibly to avoid British models. The resulting poem, while a popular success, did not provide a model for future U.S. poets.
As time went on, the influence of thetranscendentalism of the poet/philosophers Emerson and Thoreau increasingly influenced American poetry. Transcendentalism was the distinctly American strain of EnglishRomanticism that began withWilliam Wordsworth andSamuel Taylor Coleridge. Emerson, arguably one of the founders of transcendentalism, had visited England as a young man to meet these two English poets, as well asThomas Carlyle. While Romanticism transitioned intoVictorianism in post-reform England, it became energetic in America from the 1830s through to theCivil War.
Edgar Allan Poe was a unique poet during this time, brooding over themes of the macabre and dark, connecting his poetry and aesthetic vision to his philosophical, psychological, moral, and cosmological theories.[18]Diverse authors inFrance,Sweden andRussia were heavily influenced by his works. The poetCharles Baudelaire was particularly obsessed with Poe, and drew upon the American poet to inventSymbolism inFrench poetry. Also, Poe's poem "The Raven" swept across Europe and was translated into many languages. He declined in popularity as a poet, however, and alienated himself from his contemporaries by publicly accusingHenry Wadsworth Longfellow ofplagiarism—although Longfellow never responded.[citation needed] In the 20th century, American poetWilliam Carlos Williams said of Poe that "in him American literature is anchored, in him alone, on solid ground."[19]
The final emergence of a truly indigenous English-language poetry in the United States was the work of two poets,Walt Whitman (1819–1892) andEmily Dickinson (1830–1886). On the surface, these two poets could not have been less alike. Whitman's long lines, derived from the metric of theKing James Version of the Bible, and his democratic inclusiveness stand in stark contrast with Dickinson's concentrated phrases and short lines andstanzas, derived from Protestanthymnals.
What links them is their common connection to Emerson (a passage from whom Whitman printed on the second edition ofLeaves of Grass), and the daring originality of their visions. These two poets can be said to represent the birth of two major American poeticidioms—the free metric and direct emotional expression of Whitman, and thegnomic obscurity andirony of Dickinson—both of which would profoundly stamp the American poetry of the 20th century.[20]
The development of these idioms, as well as conservative reactions against them, can be traced through the works of poets such asEdwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935),Stephen Crane (1871–1900),Robert Frost (1874–1963),Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), andEdna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). Frost, in particular, is a commanding figure, who aligned strict poetic meter, particularly blank verse and terser lyrical forms, with a "vurry Amur'k'n" (as Pound put it) idiom. He successfully revitalized a rural tradition with many English antecedents from his belovedGolden Treasury and produced an oeuvre of major importance, rivaling or even excelling in achievement that of the key modernists and making him, within the full sweep of traditional modern English-language verse, a peer ofHardy andYeats. But from Whitman and Dickinson the outlines of a distinctively new organic poetic tradition, less indebted to English formalism than Frost's work, were clear to see, and they would come to full fruition in the 1910s and 1920s. As Colin Falck noted, "To the Whitmanian heritage of cadenced free verse she [Millay] brings the greater reflective tightness of Robinson Jeffers."[21]
This new idiom, combined with a study of 19th-centuryFrench poetry, formed the basis of American input into 20th-centuryEnglish-language poetic modernism.
Ezra Pound (1885–1972),H.D. (1886–1961), andRichard Aldington (1892–1962), conceived ofImagism in 1913, which Pound defined as poetry written with an economy of words.[22]T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) was among the leading figures at the time. Pound rejected traditional poetic form and meter and of Victorian diction. He believed both steered American poetry toward greater density, difficulty, and opacity, with an emphasis on techniques such as fragmentation, ellipsis, allusion, juxtaposition, ironic and shifting personae, and mythic parallelism.[citation needed] Pound opened American poetry to diverse influences, including the traditional poetries ofChina andJapan.[23] Eliot'sThe Waste Land (1922) is a major example of the transition into literary modernity.[24]
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Numerous other poets made important contributions at this revolutionary juncture, includingGertrude Stein (1874–1946),Amy Lowell (1874-1925),Wallace Stevens (1879–1955),William Carlos Williams (1883–1963),Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886–1961),Marianne Moore (1887–1972),E.E. Cummings (1894–1962), andHart Crane (1899–1932). The cerebral and skeptical Romantic Stevens helped revive the philosophical lyric,[25] and Williams was to become exemplary for many later poets because he, more than any of his peers, contrived to marry spokenAmerican English withfree verserhythms.[26] Cummings remains notable for his experiments with typography and evocation of a spontaneous, childlike vision of reality.[27]
Whereas these poets were unambiguously aligned withhigh modernism, other poets active in the United States in the first third of the 20th century were not. Among the more important of the latter were those who were associated with what came to be known as theNew Criticism. These includedJohn Crowe Ransom (1888–1974),Allen Tate (1899–1979), andRobert Penn Warren (1905–1989). Other poets of the era, such asArchibald MacLeish (1892–1982), experimented with modernist techniques but were drawn toward traditional modes of writing. Still others, such asRobinson Jeffers (1887–1962), adopted Modernist freedom while remaining aloof from Modernist factions and programs.
In addition, other early 20th-century poets maintained or were forced to maintain a peripheral relationship tohigh modernism, likely due to the racially charged themes of their work. They includeCountee Cullen (1903–1946),Alice Dunbar Nelson (1875–1935),Gwendolyn Bennett (1902–1981),Langston Hughes (1902–1967),Claude McKay (1889–1948),Jean Toomer (1894–1967), and other African American poets of theHarlem Renaissance.
The modernist torch was carried in the 1930s mainly by the group of poets known as theObjectivists. These includedLouis Zukofsky (1904–1978),Charles Reznikoff (1894–1976),George Oppen (1908–1984),Carl Rakosi (1903–2004) and, later,Lorine Niedecker (1903–1970).Kenneth Rexroth, who was published in theObjectivist Anthology, was, along withMadeline Gleason (1909–1973), a forerunner of theSan Francisco Renaissance. Many of the Objectivists came from urban communities of new immigrants, and this new vein of experience and language enriched the growing American idiom.
Archibald Macleish calledJohn Gillespie Magee Jr. "the first poet of the war".[28]
World War II saw the emergence of a new generation of poets, many of whom were influenced by Wallace Stevens andRichard Eberhart (1904–2005).Karl Shapiro (1913–2000),Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) andJames Dickey (1923–1997) all wrote poetry that sprang from experience of active service. Together withElizabeth Bishop (1911–1979),Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) (1904-1991),Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) andDelmore Schwartz (1913–1966), they formed a generation of poets that in contrast to the preceding generation often wrote in traditional verse forms.
After the war, a number of new poets and poetic movements emerged.John Berryman (1914–1972) andRobert Lowell (1917–1977) were the leading lights in what was to become known as theConfessional movement, which was to have a strong influence on later poets likeSylvia Plath (1932–1963) andAnne Sexton (1928–1974). Though both Berryman and Lowell were closely acquainted with Modernism, they were mainly interested in exploring their own experiences as subject matter and a style that Lowell referred to as "cooked" – that is, consciously and carefully crafted.
In contrast, theBeat poets, who included such figures asJack Kerouac (1922–1969),Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997),Gregory Corso (1930–2001),Joanne Kyger (1934-2017),Gary Snyder (born 1930),Diane Di Prima (1934-2020),Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) andLawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2020), were distinctly raw. Reflecting, sometimes in an extreme form, the open, relaxed and searching society of the 1950s and 1960s, the Beats pushed the boundaries of the American idiom in the direction of demotic speech perhaps further than any other group.
Around the same time, theBlack Mountain poets, under the leadership ofCharles Olson (1910–1970), were working atBlack Mountain College in North Carolina. These poets were exploring the possibilities of open form but in a much more programmatic way than the Beats. The main poets involved wereRobert Creeley (1926–2005),Robert Duncan (1919–1988),Denise Levertov (1923–1997),Ed Dorn (1929–1999),Paul Blackburn (1926–1971),Hilda Morley (1916–1998),John Wieners (1934–2002), andLarry Eigner (1927–1996). They based their approach to poetry on Olson's 1950 essayProjective Verse, in which he called for a form based on the line, a line based on human breath and a mode of writing based on perceptions juxtaposed so that one perception leads directly to another. This in turn influenced the works ofMichael McClure (1932-2020),Kenneth Irby (1936–2015), andRonald Johnson (1935–1998), poets from the Midwestern United States who moved to San Francisco, and in so doing extended the influence of the Black Mountain school geographically westward; their participation in the poetic circles of San Francisco can be seen as partly forming the basis for what would later be known as "Language poetry."[29][30]
Other poets often associated with the Black Mountain areCid Corman (1924–2004) andTheodore Enslin (1925-2011), but they are perhaps correctly viewed as direct descendants of the Objectivists. One-time Black Mountain College resident, composerJohn Cage (1912–1992), along withJackson Mac Low (1922–2004), wrote poetry based on chance or aleatory techniques. Inspired byZen,Dada and scientific theories ofindeterminacy, they were to prove to be important influences on the 1970s U.S.avant-garde.
The Beats and some of the Black Mountain poets often are considered to have been responsible for the San Francisco Renaissance. However, as previously noted, San Francisco had become a hub of experimental activity from the 1930s thanks toKenneth Rexroth andGleason. Other poets involved in this scene includedCharles Bukowski (1920–1994) andJack Spicer (1925–1965). These poets sought to combine a contemporary spoken idiom with inventive formal experiment.
Jerome Rothenberg (1931-2024) is well known for his work inethnopoetics, but he was the coiner of the term "deep image", which he used to describe the work of poets likeRobert Kelly (born 1935),Diane Wakoski (born 1937) andClayton Eshleman (1935-2021). Deep Image poetry was inspired by thesymbolist theory of correspondences, in particular the work of Spanish poetFederico García Lorca. The term later was popularized byRobert Bly. The Deep Image movement was the most international, accompanied by a flood of new translations from Latin American and European poets such asPablo Neruda,César Vallejo andTomas Tranströmer. Some of the poets who became associated with Deep Image areGalway Kinnell,James Wright,Mark Strand andW.S. Merwin. Both Merwin and California poetGary Snyder became known for their interest in environmental and ecological concerns.
TheSmall Press poets (sometimes called the mimeograph movement) are another influential and eclectic group of poets who surfaced in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1950s and are still active today.[citation needed] Fiercely independent editors, who were also poets, edited and published low-budget periodicals and chapbooks of emerging poets who might otherwise have gone unnoticed. This work ranged from formal to experimental.Gene Fowler,A.D. Winans, Hugh Fox, street poet and activistJack Hirschman,Paul Foreman,Jim Cohn,John Bennett, andF.A. Nettelbeck are among the many poets who are still actively continuing the Small Press Poets tradition.[citation needed] Many have turned to the new medium of the Web for its distribution capabilities.
Los Angeles poets:Leland Hickman (1934–1991), Holly Prado (1938-2019),Harry Northup (born 1940),Wanda Coleman (1946-2013),Michael C. Ford (born 1939),Kate Braverman (1949-2019),Eloise Klein Healy (born 1943), Bill Mohr, Laurel Ann Bogen, met at Beyond BaroqueLiterary Arts Center, in Venice, California. They are lyric poets, heavily autobiographical; some are practitioners of the experimental long poem. Their predecessors in Los Angeles wereAnn Stanford (1916–1987),Thomas McGrath (1916–1990),Jack Hirschman (1933-2021).Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, created by George Drury Smith in 1968, is the central literary arts center in the Los Angeles area.
Just as the West Coast had the San Francisco Renaissance and the Small Press Movement, the East Coast produced theNew York School. This group aimed to write poetry that spoke directly of everyday experience in everyday language and produced a poetry of urbane wit and elegance that contrasts with the work of their Beat contemporaries (though in other ways, including their mutual respect for American slang and disdain for academic or "cooked" poetry, they were similar). Leading members of the group includeJohn Ashbery (1927-2017),Frank O'Hara (1926–1966),Kenneth Koch (1925–2002),James Schuyler (1923–1991),Barbara Guest (1920–2006),Ted Berrigan (1934–1983),Anne Waldman (born 1945) andBernadette Mayer (born 1945). Of this group, John Ashbery, in particular, has emerged as a defining force in recent poetics, and he is regarded by many as the most important American poet since World War II.
The last 40 years of poetry in the United States have brought new groups, schools, and trends into vogue. The 1970s saw a revival of interest insurrealism, with the more prominent poets working in this field beingAndrei Codrescu (born in 1946),Russell Edson (1935-2014) andMaxine Chernoff (born in 1952). Performance poetry emerged from the Beat andhippie happenings, the talk-poems ofDavid Antin (1932-2016), and ritual events performed by Rothenberg, to become a serious poetic stance which embracesmulticulturalism and a range of poets from a multiplicity of cultures. This mirrored a general growth of interest in poetry by African Americans includingRobert Hayden (1913-1980),Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000),Maya Angelou (1928–2014),Ishmael Reed (born in 1938),Nikki Giovanni (born in 1943), andDetrick Hughes (born in 1966).
Another group of poets, theLanguage school (orL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, after the magazine that bears that name), have continued and extended the Modernist andObjectivist traditions of the 1930s. Some poets associated with the group areLyn Hejinian,Ron Silliman,Tom Mandel,Bob Perelman andLeslie Scalapino. Their poems—fragmentary, purposefully ungrammatical, sometimes mixing texts from different sources and idioms—can be by turns abstract, lyrical, and highly comic.
The Language school includes a high proportion of women, which mirrors another general trend—the rediscovery and promotion of poetry written both by earlier and contemporary women poets. A number of the more prominent African American poets to emerge are women, and other prominent women writers includeAdrienne Rich (1929–2012),Jean Valentine (1934–2020), andAmy Gerstler (born in 1956).
Although poetry in traditional classical forms had mostly fallen out of fashion by the 1960s, the practice was kept alive by poets of great formal virtuosity likeJames Merrill (1926–1995), author of the epic poemThe Changing Light at Sandover,Richard Wilbur, and British-born San Francisco poetThom Gunn. The 1980s and 1990s saw a re-emergent interest in traditional form, sometimes dubbedNew Formalism orNeoformalism. These include poets such asMolly Peacock,Brad Leithauser,Dana Gioia,Donna J. Stone,Timothy Steele,Alicia Ostriker, andMarilyn Hacker. Some of the more outspoken New Formalists have declared that the return torhyme and more fixedmeters to be the new avant-garde. Their critics sometimes associate this traditionalism with the conservative politics of theReagan era, noting the recent appointment ofGioia as chair of theNational Endowment for the Arts.
Haiku has attracted a community of American poets dedicated to its development as a poetic genre in English. The extremely terse Japanese haiku first influenced the work ofEzra Pound and theImagists, and post-war poets such asKerouac andRichard Wright wrote substantial bodies of originalhaiku in English. Other poets such as Ginsberg, Snyder, Wilbur, Merwin, and many others have at least dabbled with haiku, often simply as a syllabic form. Starting in 1963, with the founding of the journalAmerican Haiku, poets such asCor van den Heuvel,Nick Virgilio,Raymond Roseliep, John Wills,Anita Virgil, Gary Hotham,Marlene Mountain,Wally Swist,Peggy Willis Lyles,George Swede, Michael Dylan Welch,Jim Kacian, and others have created significant oeuvres of haiku poetry, evincing continuities with bothTranscendentalism andImagism and often maintaining an anti-anthropocentricenvironmental focus on nature during an unparalleled age ofhabitat destruction and human alienation.
The last two decades have seen a revival of theBeat poetry spoken word tradition, in the form of thepoetry slam. Chicago construction workerMarc Smith turned urban poetry performance into audience-judged competitions in 1984.[31] Poetry slams emphasize a style of writing that is topical, provocative and easily understood. Poetry slam opened the door for a generation of writers andspoken word performers, includingAlix Olson,Apollo Poetry,Taylor Mali, andSaul Williams, and inspired hundreds of open mics across the U.S.Poetry has become a significant presence on the Web, with a number of new online journals, 'zines, blogs and other websites. An example of the fluid nature of web-based poetry communities is, "thisisbyus, now defunct, yet this community of writers continues and expands on Facebook and has allowed both novice and professional poets to explore writing styles.During the contemporary time frame, there were major independent voices who defied links to well-known American poetic movements and forms such as poet and literary criticRobert Peters, greatly influenced by the Victorian English poetRobert Browning’s poetic monologues, became reputable for executing his monologic personae like his Mad KingLudwig II of Bavaria into popular one-man performances.[32] Another example isLouise Glück who citesEmily Dickinson andWilliam Blake as her influences. Critics and scholars have discussed whether or not she is a confessional poet. Sylvia Plath may be another of her influences.
TheLibrary of Congress produces a guide to American poetry inspired by the9/11 attacks, including anthologies and books dedicated to the subject.[33][34]
Robert Pinsky has a special place in American poetry as he was thepoet laureate of the United States for three terms.[35] No other poet has been so honored. His "Favorite Poem Project" is unique, inviting all citizens to share their all-time favorite poetic composition and why they love it. He is a professor at Boston University and the poetry editor atSlate. "Poems to Read"[36] is a demonstration of his poetic vision, joining the word and the common man.
With increased consciousness of society's impact on natural ecosystems, it is inexorable that such themes would become integrated into poetry. The foundations of poems about nature are found in the work ofHenry David Thoreau andWalt Whitman. The modern ecopoetics movement was pioneered byJack Collom, who taught a dedicated course on ecopoetics atNaropa University in Boulder, Colorado for 17 years.[citation needed] Contemporary poetry on environmental sustainability is found among the works ofJ.S. Shipman, for example, in, "Calling on You."[37]
On October 13, 2016, the Nobel committee announced that it would be awardingBob Dylan the literature prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".[38]The New York Times reported: "Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901."[38]Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, described Dylan's place in literary history:
a singer worthy of a place beside the Greek bards, besideOvid, beside theRomantic visionaries, beside the kings and queens ofthe blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliantstandards.[39]
The growth in the popularity of graduatecreative writing programs has given poets the opportunity to make a living as teachers. This increased professionalization of poetry, combined with the reluctance of most major book and magazine presses to publish poetry, has meant that, for the foreseeable future at least, poetry may have found its new home in the academy and in small independent journals. A prominent example was Nobel Laureate Louise Glück who taught atYale University.
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