This chapter focuses on the period following the civil rights movements and social unrest of the 1960s, which sees a remarkable flourishing of poetry by writers hailing from a wide range of ethnic and racial backgrounds and sexual identities. With sections on African American, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and LGBTQ poetry, this chapter offers an introduction to the variety and richness of the various branches of multicultural poetry that emerge between 1970s and 2000 and charts the rapid and exciting diversification of American poetry during this period. The chapter examines how poets write about racial identity and ethnic heritage, the immigrant experience, assimilation, language, the ideals and the dark realities of America’s supposedly egalitarian and democratic society, and the tensions between more mainstream lyric approaches and more avant-garde poetics by poets of color. The chapter focuses on a range of representative poets including Michael Harper, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Nathaniel Mackey, Harryette Mullen, Gary Soto, Alberto Ríos, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Martin Espada, Juan Felipe Herrera, Cathy Song, John Yau, Joy Harjo, Frank Bidart, and Mark Doty.

This chapter discusses how contemporary poets are influenced and inspired by the rise of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, which unleashed a broad surge of poetry by women who began to write openly about their lives and to use their work to directly critique sexism and patriarchy. The chapter examines debates and tensions within women’s poetry of the period, including fraught questions about how poetry might best address female experience, gender roles, race and intersectionality, the relation between poetry and politics, and the tension between more mainstream lyric approaches and more avant-garde experimental feminist poetry. The chapter focuses on a range of representative poets, including Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Marilyn Chin, and Kathleen Fraser.