Post-war to Post-truth: Reassessing the American Avant-Garde Canon

Abstract

This chapter juxtaposes The New American Poetry with contemporary discussions about the exclusion of women and people of color in avant-garde poetry and suggests how the anthology reoriented the relationship between form, content and identity. Examining The New American Poetry’s continued influence while remaining aware of its Cold War context shows how Allen’s conception of American poetry was conditioned by the culture he pushed against, and it also suggests that many critics continue to judge poetry by a form-based model that Allen’s anthology helped establish and which is no longer relevant because it does not take into account writers who are more concerned with identity than formal mastery or experimentation.