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1 results

  • Chapter 41 - The 1970s and the “Poetry of the Center”

  • from Part IV - Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000
  • Edited by Alfred Bendixen, Princeton University, New Jersey, Stephen Burt, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of American Poetry
    Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 937-958

  • Summary

    In the 1950s San Francisco acquired a reputation, which it has since maintained, as a mecca for poetry. In the popular imagination, San Francisco poetry is synonymous with the beat Movement, which first rose to prominence there. This chapter presents the salient features of milieu and then discusses what have been seen as the two strains within it, the spontaneous and the hermetic. Making a virtue of eschewing fame, the hermetic wing turned inward, viewing the scene of writing as akin to magic, in which spirits might direct the making of poetry, and addressing the poem principally to a group of like-minded initiates. In addition to spiritualistic composition and a penchant for occult sources, such as the Grail myth or the tarot deck, there are two other strikingly hermetic qualities to Spicer's oeuvre. The other hermetic aspect of Spicer's poetry involves his relationship to language.