Stefan Langenbach 
Postmodern avant-garde – A comparison of the different movements [PDF ebook] 

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies – Literature, grade: 2, 7, University of Cologne (Philosophisches Seminar), course: Introduction to American Poetry, language: English, abstract: This term-paper was prepared in order to show the different poetic movements of the postmodern
avant-garde. These are known under the names “Black Mountain school”, “San
Francisco Renaissance”, “Beat-generation” and ” New York School” and began in the 1950s
in America.
My term-paper will show the development of these different poetic movements, give an
understanding of the most important poets of each movement and explain if and how the
different movements are linked to each other and what they have in common.
From the middle of the 1950s up to the early years of the 1960s the world of American poetry was divided into two different groups. One of these groups represented the lyrical mainstream while the other group saw themselves as a kind of counterculture. The idols of this group where William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky and Gertrude Stein. By the beginning of the 1950s this new way of writing, which was called postmodern avant-garde, was just in the beginning years. In 1960 the anthology New American Poetry was published by Grove Press and brought together many writers of this new poetic line for the first time.