Poetry, 1970-2020

POETRY, 1970-2020. Born mainly during the 1940s, poets who began publishing at the beginning of this long period grew up in the 1950s and acquired significant life experiences in the ferment of the 1960s. The McCarthy/Eisenhower era provided a template of social, political and cultural conservatism, followed by the rise of the civil rights movement, the cultural protest of the hippies, and the advent of the war in Southeast Asia. Racial unrest included marches, street demonstrations, and police repression, as well as resistance in the form of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. In parallel fashion, the Latino movement galvanized with union drives among agricultural workers. Native Americans occupied Alcatraz and rose up at Wounded Knee. Each social strand contributed its poets, achieving elements of solidarity and friendship across racial boundaries. If radicalism lacked the same centralizing focus that the Socialist and Communist parties had provided in earlier times, this broader rising among a wider variety of the population made a wide impact on literature.

Successful national liberation movements throughout the world, especially in Vietnam and Cuba, brought to thousands the work of many international poets, including Pablo Neruda of Chile, Mahmoud Darwish of Palestine, and Aimée Cesaire of Martinique. Numerous small presses emerged, some evolving into significant publishers of poetry by international leftwing writers and American writers sympathetic to the same causes. These presses included Greywolf, Coffee House, Curbstone, Broadside, Isthmus, Copper Canyon, Third World, Alice James, Fence, Wave. Action, Reed and Cannon, and Thunder’s Mouth. Some presses focused on particular groups such as Art De Publico (Latinos), Interlink and Three Continents (Middle Eastern), Kaya (Asian American), Arizona State University (Native American), and Greenfield and White Pine (Native American). Myriad teachers at all levels entered their profession determined to implement multicultural curricula using global literature. Propelled by the Hip Hop explosion that inspired and legitimized poetry writing, thousands of black, brown and other youth filled notebooks and gathered to share work in open “mikes," “slam” teams, and poetry competitions. Hip Hop brought poetry back from the ivory tower and small galleries into the streets, parks, and neighborhoods.

In Chicago, Gwendolyn Brooks, herself firmly rooted in the South Side African-American neighborhoods, wrote in the street vernacular combined with sophisticated techniques. Her award of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 became a milestone for official recognition and acclaim. In Detroit, meanwhile, Dudley Randall worked in an auto foundry, then earned college degrees and became a reference librarian in several colleges. In 1966, he launched Broadside Press, publishing a number of pioneering poetry chapbooks. Black Poets (1971) quickly became an influential anthology of both classical and more recent authors. In 1981, cultural leaders in Detroit named him the city’s Poet Laureate.

In other parts of the Midwest, younger writers from industrial cities wrote about the crises emerging with the decline of factories and the concomitant decline of unions. David Smith founded Bottom Dog Press in Ohio, which published David Shevin's Needles and Needs (1994), as well as his own The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer (2017). Bottom Dog published more than 200 books. In the Pittsburgh area, a collective issued a magazine, the Mill Hunk Herald, which included poetry by Peter Oresick, who had written about industry in The Story of Glass (1977) and later issued the anthology Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life (1990). Jim Daniels, a member of the Mill Hunk group, gathered first-hand poetry from the shop floor in Factory Poems (1979) and Over the Line (1981). An notable anthology, Overtime: Punchin' Out with the Mill Hunk Herald, 1979-1989 (1990), summed up a larger experience. Both Oresick and Daniels went on to long and distinguished careers in academic teaching and publishing.

Ohio-based Michael Henson, with long-standing ties to Appalachia, published several collections of prose stories of a similar character, but he also wrote poetry, including Crow Call (2006) about the murder of a friend in the Over the Rhine slum of Cincinnati. Henson's work has a visionary quality compared to Blake, powerfully evident in poems like "They All Asked about You." His poetry has been collected in The Dead Singing (2016). P.J. Laska, another poet with Appalachian roots, published Wages and Dreams (1980) and a translation of the Dao De Jing (2012).

Jared Carter, with roots in rural Indiana, wrote poetry in traditional forms, but always with sympathy for radical places, such as the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill in Kentucky. Work, for the Night is Coming (1981) won the Walt Whitman Award. Carter chronicled an imaginary place, "Mississinewa County," focusing on the ways projects like dams transformed the environment. A poem on Coxey's Army, a march of the unemployed in 1894, told of its passing through rural Indiana and appeared as a broadside by John Brown Press. Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems (2014) contains an overview of Carter’s poetry. Wisconsin's Sue Doro recounted her experiences in machine shops in Of Birds and Factories (1983), Heart, Home, and Hardhats (1986), and Blue Collar Goodbyes (1992), focusing on the challenges of being a woman in traditionally male-dominated trades.

A loose collective of friends in Minneapolis-St. Paul, meanwhile, produced several books of their works. T. Kevin O'Rourke published mimeographed books based in part on his experience as a deckhand on regional rivers. Lyle Daggett, a telephone operator, published several books, culminating in All Through the Night: New and Selected Poems (2013). Earl Nurmi, a red Finn from the Iron Range, published My Nation, the World (1981). Robert Edwards, a student of the poet Thomas McGrath, worked in construction before injuries forced him to retire from that work. His books include Radio Venceremos (1990) and The Big Job: Poems 1978-2004. Edwards also published a magazine, Pemmican, which later became a webzine. Another student of McGrath, Dale Jacobson, published Factories and Cities (2003) and several other collections.

Educated as a scholar of medieval English literature at Columbia University, John Crawford launched West End magazine, named after a local saloon. The magazine soon became West End Press, which moved briefly to Cambridge, Massachusetts, then to Kansas City, Minneapolis, and finally Albuquerque. In each locale, West End sought out radical writers, but also concentrated on reprinting stories by the legendary Midwestern radical Meridel LeSueur. West End also published LeSueur's novel The Girl (1978). In Kansas City, Crawford published a chapbook of five regional poets, Dream of the Highway (1979), including Tom Page and Fred Whitehead. Raised in a Wichita railroad family, Page went on to publish several collections honoring his working-class background. In Minneapolis, West End issued Sharon Doubiago's monumental long poem Hard Country (1982), a wide-ranging narrative stretching through the cultures of America. In Albuquerque, West End focused on writers from the Southwest, including Poet Laureates from the city: Hakim Bellamy, Swear (2013); Jessica Helen Lopez, Always Messing with Them Boys (2011); and Mary Oishi, Spirit Birds They Told Me (2011). West End also published the veteran activist poet Margaret Randall, Dancing with the Doe: New and Selected Poems 1986-1991 (1992).

By 1996, fed up with the upper class white poetry hierarchy, Black poets Toi Derrricote and Cornelius Eady formed Cave Canem (Latin: Beware of The Dog), an organization to help African Americans to obtain MFA degrees, i.e., the job security equivalent of a union card. With more than 200 current members, Cave Canem gave scholarships and awards and partnered with similar organizations to conduct retreats and workshops. They published several anthologies on diverse themes.

Coming out of the Brooklyn Puerto Rican community, Martin Espada worked as an immigration rights attorney and became a college teacher in Massachusetts. His books include Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (2003). He also edited the important anthologies Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination (1994) and What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019).

Balancing work as an academic in upstate New York and living part-time in the Albuquerque area until retiring there, John Roche published an unusual and lively collection in The Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet (2012), a wandering narrative of experiences of a vagabond persona. Next, he drew together an anthology of "Joe" poems from one hundred other writers: Mo' Joe: The Joe the Poet Anthology (2015). He went on to produce a sequel of sorts, Joe Rides Again: The Further Travels of Joe the Poet (2020). Meanwhile, he edited five volumes on contemporary themes, called Poets Speak: Trumped (2017), Hers (2017), Water (2017), Walls (2018), and Survival (2018), each of them gathering work from a wide range of poets. Jules Nyquist, married to Rocheand author of Homesick then, (2018), co-edited the Poets Speak series and ran Jules' Poetry Playhouse in rural Placitas, New Mexico.

Oklahoma produced several important poets during this period. Mary McAnally, a Christian minister and pastor for Unitarian congregations, issued We Will Make a River (1979), and Cosmic Rainbow: New and Collected Poems (2006). McAnally concentrated on themes of resistance to marital abuse and liberation. Joy Harjo, of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, published a first collection, She Had Some Horses (1983), which was quickly acclaimed for its earthy lyrical qualities. She later published a prose memoir, Crazy Brave (2018), and after named US Poet Laureate in 2019 a larger volume of poetry, An American Sunrise. She went on to co-edit an anthology of Native poets, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (2020). Also from rural Oklahoma, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish studied at the University of Oklahoma, published Work Is Love Made Visible (2009), and launched Mongrel Empire Press which has published Oklahoma writers and poets. In 2017, she was named Oklahoma Poet Laureate.

In Southern California, Luis Rodriguez issued The Concrete River (1991) and an influential prose memoir, Always Running (1993), about youth gang life in Los Angeles. He founded Tia Chucha Press, which published Latino/Latina writers and My Nature is Hunger: New and Selected Poems, 1989-2004 (2005). In 2014, Rodriguez was named the second Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.

In Northern California, Jack Hirschman long exemplified the aesthetic and lifestyle of the bohemian North Beach section of San Francisco. The author of more than fifty books of poetry and essays, Hirschman had been active as a communist and the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, which published several annual anthologies, Overthrowing Capitalism (2014-2019) and Building Socialism (2020). Among his own books is a massive volume entitled The Arcanes (2006), which fuses experimental poetry and esoteric language. In 2006, Hirschman was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco.

California has long been a center for Asian-American poetry, among its writers Janice Mirikitani, who with her family was interned during World War II in a camp for Japanese-Americans. In Out of the Dust (2014) she addresses the cruel irony of immigrants losing their land while their fathers and brothers died fighting fascists in Europe. Linh Dinh, an immigrant from Vietnam, recounts the Cu Chi tunnels in Borderless Bodies (2005).

During the last half century, American poetry, like American society, became more diverse, more rich in multi-racial culture, while at the same time retaining deep roots in history and tradition, including the traditions of working-class life. At a time when the ruling circles of this society became more conservative, poets attained a notable status. Several have been named Poet Laureates of their cities, States, and the nation.

Harlow, Barbara. Resistance Literature. New York: Routledge, 1987.

Medina, Tony, and Louis Reyes Rivera, eds. Bum Rush the Page. New York: Three Rivers/Random House, 2001.

Nowak, Paul. Social Poetics. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2020.

Shockley, Evie. Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African-American Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011.

Whitehead, Fred. The Poetry of Resistance: 33 Contemporary American Voices. London: John Brown Press, 2012.

Yu, Timothy. Race and the Avant-garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry Since 1965. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.