Description
Book SynopsisMainstream American poetry of the 1950s has long been dismissed as deliberately indifferent to its cultural circumstances. This study attempts to break the placid surface of the hollow decade to reveal a poetry sharply responsive to issues of its time. It undertakes a re-examination of many of the "mainstream" and almost forgotten poets.
Trade Review"Erudite and comprehensive... Commendable for its revisionist perspective and its wealth of scholarly information. " Choice "There are many close, instructive readings of poems (and careers). Altogether, a remarkable integration of social contexts and poetic details." Virginia Quarterly Review "Cold War Poetry changes our understanding not just of the fifties but of how that decade leaves its mark, however effaced, on everything after in contemporary poetics." -- Walter Kalaidjian, author of American Culture between the Wars: Revisionary Modernism and Postmodern Critique "This is quite simply the best book ever written on American poetry of the 1950s. Brunner's claim that 1950s mythological and domestic poetry displays displaced political anxiety is both new and persuasive. His treatment of minority and women's writing gives us our first full account of the period." -- Cary Nelson, editor of Oxford's Anthology of Modern American Poetry
