The Poetry of Disturbance
The Discomforts of Postwar American Poetry

In this book, David Bergman argues that post-war poetry underwent a significant shift from a visual to oral emphasis.

David Bergman (Author)

9781107086685, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 June 2015

189 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.4 cm, 0.41 kg

In The Poetry of Disturbance, David Bergman argues that post-war poetry underwent a significant if subtle shift in emphasis, moving from the modernist concern with the poem as a visual text to one that was chiefly oral in nature. The resulting change was disturbing, especially for those brought up on the principles of high modernism. This new stress on orality implied a shift in the economy of the poem, away from the austerity of language advocated by Pound and Eliot to a style that conveyed freedom, expansiveness, and an innovative directness.

1. Poems that disturb
2. Disturbing modernism
3. Orality and copia
4. Disturbing voices
5. A queer directness
6. The long poem.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]