The Beats, Black Mountain, and New Modes in American Poetry

The Beats, Black Mountain, and New Modes of American Poetry explores correspondences among Black Mountain and Beat Generation writers, two of most well-known and influential groups of poets in the 1950s. The division of writers as Beat or Black Mountain has hindered our understanding of the ways that these poets developed from mutual influences, benefitted from direct relations, and overlapped their boundaries. This book refines and adds context to both Beat Studies and Black Mountain Studies by investigating the groups’ intersections and undercurrents. One goal of the book is to deconstruct the Beat and Black Mountain labels in order to reveal the shifting and fluid relationships among the individual poets who developed a revolutionary poetics in the 1950s and beyond. Taken together, the chapters of this study clarify the radical experimentation with poetics undertaken by this generation of poets.