American Objectivist Poetry Across the 20th Century

Offering a new introduction to an important yet often overlooked group of 20th century American poets, this book re-examines their work as a group while giving special attention to their individual trajectories.

Objectivist poets’ contribution to American literary history is no longer secret, but the nature of that specific contribution remains surprisingly unclear, and in need of serious revision. Through a range of perceptive close readings, this book offers a detailed assessment of this group—Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky—from the 1930s Modernist era to the New American Poetry of the 1950s, all the way to the experimentations of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In doing so, it presents a new critical history of 20th century American poetry and how to engage with it.