(1.8) The New Romantics: Successors of Confessional and Deep Image Schools

Stanley Kunitz (1905 - 2006)

- an American poet of Jewish origin, kept on writing and publishing until his nineties, lived to his hundredth birthday

- became probably the most influential Jewish-American poet after the Second World War

> Intellectual Things (1930):

- his first collection, represents his earliest period

- in the difficult Academic style imitating the 17^th century English Metaphysical poets (John Donne, Andrew Marvell), their Modernist counterparts (T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound), and their New Critical successors (John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate)

> Selected Poems, 1928 - 1958 (1958):

- a later collection, represents the culmination of his middle period, won him the Pulitzer Prize

- includes formally freer verse of visionary sensibility following the tradition of William Blake

> Passing Through (1995):

- a late collection in the voice of an old wise man, represents his latest mature period

- in the simple style of autobiographical lyric poetry, minimalist and restrained

- earned him the label of a Garden Poet, in his garden imagery paralleled perhaps only by Theodore Roethke

- bases the lyric tension on the awareness that we are living and dying at the same time

- preoccupied with melancholy portrayals of loss in life and with life's fleeting nature

>> "An Old Cracked Tune":

- a short condensed poem comprising two stanzas with deliberately imperfect rhyme scheme

- a bitter-sweet song of a Jewish boy simply happy to keep on surviving in his harsh life

- the method resembles that of W. Blake who wrote about a grain of sand, also for Kunitz every little thing is important

- concludes with the image of the speaker dancing "on the edge of the road", which is the typical position for American poets, especially then for Jewish-American ones

- "the edge" might not be viewed as negative, for the Bible and Talmud contain comments on the edges of the page while the sacred texts stand in the centre, so the awareness of standing on the edge may represent the ideal state for a poet intent on achieving wisdom and happiness

>> "Touch Me":

- a love poem of an elderly speaker recalling the past intensity of love

- written when the poet was nearly 90 years old

- celebrates life in its affirmation, but at the same time laments life

>> "The Round":

- a garden poem with the speaker reflecting on the repetitive cycle of his days and by extension, the days of other people

- follows the circular motion of return to one's original thought at the end of the poem and in this way resembles Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and its concluding repeated line "And miles to go before I sleep"

>> "The Layers":

- the poem features an elderly speaker contemplating retrospectively his life journey so far

- follows his own various metamorphoses and concludes that the transformations are not over yet

Tony Hoagland (b. 1953)

- self-consciously tries to be a popular, entertaining, and widely read poet

- earned himself the label of one of the Younger American Poets who are confessional, but humorous and entertaining

> "Lucky":

- a parent dying poem, follows the duty of the son attending to the most personal needs of his frail old mother

> "Are You Experienced?":

- notes: Jimi Hendrix was a singer who died of drug overdose, "Experience" is a title of Hendrix's song and an eponymous LP, "Purple Haze" is another of Hendrix's song referring to drug experience

- the poem pokes fun at the 1960s drug users, the Beats, and their systematic derangement of senses

- undermines the enthusiasm of those Hendrix fans who are typically highly serious about liking Hendrix

- presents a speaker sick from drugs and looking for his car "to have something familiar to throw up next to" during a Hendrix concert

> "America":

- a poem on the American pop culture nourished by the economical growth

- pokes fun at his fellow student friends, left-wing oriented, but driving expensive cars

- presents materialism in a grotesque way, e.g. cuts down father to a puppet stuffed with banknotes

> "Disappointment":

- a poem featuring a speaker standing on a bridge, contemplating his spoiled life, but not considering jumping off

- pokes fun even at serious matters which other people hold for reverent or dear, including religion

- alludes to the Confessional poet John Berryman who killed himself by jumping off a bridge

Campbell McGrath (b. 1962)

- a well-praised poet, author of prose poems and long poems, successful despite the recession of the long poem form

> "A Dove":

- a prose poem, compressed, attentive to each single phrase

- the father-speaker recalls the interruption of a still Sunday morning by the discovery of a hurt dove which affected his young son and made the father attend to the bird

> "The Florida Poem":

- an extended Whitmanesque meditation on the history of the state