The New Anthology of American Poetry: Vol. III: Postmodernisms 1950-Present

INTRODUCTION

297 INTRODUCTION It is hard to pin down what writers mean when they use the term “postmodernism .” Some use it to indicate a spirit of experimentalism: a fragmenting and foregrounding of language, a dismantling of the lyric “I,” and a requirement that the reader collaborate in the construction of meaning. Others utilize the term to indicate a critique of social surfaces and the political status quo: a psychological and cultural revisioning that includes the voices of women and people of color as full partners in the poetic project. Still others view postmodernism in more historical terms, as a response to the dislocations of World War II and the Cold War, to the rise of conformity and consumerism, to the pain and disorientation of the Vietnam War, or to the rise of such mass cultural forms as movies, television , popular music, and even advertising and videos. Some of these versions of postmodernism seek to connect recent poetry back to the experimental fervor of early-twentieth-century modernism, while others reveal closer links between recent poetry and midcentury developments. If the poetry from 1950 to the present is multiplicitous and at times contradictory, so is the manner in which it has been understood. Yet multiplicity of interpretation may in itself be seen as an intrinsic element of postmodernism. The subtitle of this anthology, Postmodernisms , 1950–Present, employs the term in a nonrestrictive, chronological sense and in plural form to acknowledge the diverse strands that may appropriately be gathered under the postmodernist heading. Just as World War II (1939–45) seemed to represent a historical breach, marking the end of the modernist era and the beginning of a new ethos, so the Vietnam War era (1965–1975) caused a further rupture in continuity. The Vietnam War complicated what Tom Engelhardt has termed the “victory culture” of the 1950s. No longer was American military success assured. Yet the Cold War period ended with something that did indeed appear to be a victory: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the crumbling of the Soviet empire in 1991. The emergence of an American-led capitalist hegemony, however, created or exacerbated its own set of problems—problems that the more recent poets appearing in this volume have persistently explored. The 1990s and 2000s witnessed additional changes in ways of seeing and knowing. One change grew out of epochal technological developments, such as the rise of the Internet, which provided the Ø Introduction to Part Two 298 human subject with a set of prostheses it had never possessed before, making each individual bionic in a metaphorical (and in some cases literal) sense. Other changes related to the tragedy of 9/11; the seeming fulfillment of Robert Lowell’s prophecy (in “Waking Early Sunday Morning”) of “small war on the heels of small / war—until the end of time”; and an array of economic, political, medical , and environmental threats. Such developments stripped away the façade of normality from everyday life, leaving individuals uncertain and in special need of empathy, humor, perspective, and wisdom—just the qualities poetry can provide. One might conceive of poetic postmodernisms since 1975 as shifting back and forth along a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum resides a culturally adventurous poetics, giving voice to alternative subject positions. At the other end resides a linguistically adventurous poetics, juxtaposing words and spaces in radically new ways. Many poets visit multiple points on the spectrum by engaging in both cultural and linguistic adventures. Others remain more or less fixed. But most of the recent poets in this anthology exhibit traits that mark them as postmodern in more than just the chronological sense of the term: a resistance to oppressive norms, a rapprochement with popular culture, and a fascination with phenomena that the larger society might consider unfamiliar or peripheral. Postmodern poets may return to the past, as when they recover or parody an ancestral form, but that return itself represents a break with conventional norms. At the same time, for most of these poets, postmodernism involves a critical engagement with the present moment and an eagerness to remain in the vanguard of change. Broadly speaking, culturally oriented poets—such as Michael Harper, Frank Bidart, Marilyn Chin, Victor Hernández Cruz, Mark Doty, Naomi Shihab Nye, Li-Young Lee, and Sherman Alexie—emphasize social identity, exploring how interior lives interact with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, postcoloniality, and traditions of faith. Such poets give voice to the contrasting vocabularies that emerge in...