Approaching post-World War II poetry from a postmodern critical perspective, this study challenges the prevailing assumption that experimental forms signify political opposition while traditional forms are politically conservative. It defines postmodern poetry as a break with modernism's valorization of technique and its implicit collusion with technological progress. It shows how four major postwar poets Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, and James Merrill cannot be read as politically conservative because formally traditional or as culturally oppositional because formally...
Approaching post-World War II poetry from a postmodern critical perspective, this study challenges the prevailing assumption that experimental forms s...
