The Authoritative List of Schools of American Poetics

The Authoritative List of Schools of American Poetics, is, of course a work-in-progress. When we ran across Bob Grumman's post on the Language list, we knew we'd stumbled into a major black hole. Send all your plaints to Bob or me, the other Bob here at About Poetry, and let's see if we can't have at least as many Schools of Poetry as there are Poems!

--Bob Holman

Here they are:

MAINSTREAM POETRY

What's in all the standard anthologies; Vendler-certified; many sub-schools, some of which are:

1. Iowa-Workshop Poetry (e.g., Bell)
2. Surrealist Poetry (e.g., Bly)
3. Ecological Poetry (e.g., Snyder)
4. Jump-Cut Poetry (e.g., Ashbery)

EASY-STREAM POETRY

A variety of poetry that, based on its popularity, ought to be mainstream but is shut out of the major anthologies because academics look down on it.

1. Light Verse
2. Haiku

LANGUAGE POETRY (or “Acadominant” Poetry)

The poetry in In the American Tree, the Messerli anthology, etc.; Perloff-certified; several sub-schools that I lack the knowledge to untangle.

CONTRA-GENTEEL POETRY

All the “unrefined” plain-writing poets inspired by W.C. Williams, Frank O'Hara, the Beats, Bukowski. (Note:I include the social identity poets in this school -- but, of course, many poets, particularly the social identity poets, are in more than one group -- Maya Angelou, for instance, seems to me at times Mainstream, and at times Contra-Genteel.) The main sub-schools I know of are:

1. Conversationalist Poetry (e.g., O'Hara)
2. Beat Poetry (e.g., Corso, Bukowski), with several sub-divisions
3. Social Identity Poetry (e.g., Wanda Coleman, the Vietnam stuff Kali Tal is pushing) (This group is an expansion of what I previously was calling “Ethnic Poetry.”)
4. Pop-Rhyme, which sudivides into Rap and the Neo-James-Whitcomb-Reilly School (Yes, I need a less condescending name for this group -- and probably for the Iowa-Workshop school.)
5. Wild-Woman Poetry (e.g., Townsend) (Another name that could be improved.)

NEOFORMALIST POETRY

Poetry continuing the techniques of traditional English poetry, especially meter.

PLURAESTHETIC POETRY

Any poetry that mixes expressive modalities:

1. Visual Poetry (e.g., Kempton) (Which I for a time was over-meticulously calling “visio-textual poetry.”)
2. Sound Poetry (e.g., McCaffery) (Which I for a time was over-meticulously calling “audio-textual poetry.”)
3. Performance Poetry (e.g., Jack Foley)
4. Mathematical Poetry (e.g., LeRoy Gorman)
5. Flow-Chart Poetry (I've seen some but don't remember the name of anyone who does it.)
6. Compucentric Poetry, or poetry using computer language (e.g., Sondheim, sometimes) (An addition since last time.)
7. Polylingual Poetry (e.g., John M. Bennett, Susan Smith Nash, Sheila Murphy) (Another addition.)

INFRA-VERBAL POETRY

Poetry whose focus is the inside of words. Joyce and Carroll are infra-verbal poetry's chief forebears -- and Cummings, whom I've come to consider more an infra-verbal than a visual poet.

HYPERTEXTUAL POETRY

I know almost nothing about this. It might just be pluraesthetic poetry in a new medium. Or even ordinary poetry in a new medium.

Bob Grumman reposted this list a second time with this note:

It has been a little over a month since I posted my List of (American) Poetry Schools hoping for corrections, additions, comments. . . . I got a few back-channeled comments but not a single concrete suggestion, privately or publicly, for the improvement of the list. I think it's important enough to repeat, though, so here it is again, with a few changes that I hope are improvements. . . .

There they are, again, the eight main schools of poetry I'm aware of (or remember). For the second time I ask: any additions, corrections, comments? Or ideas as to why the list has generated so little in the way of feedback?

Don't forget to write!

Subscribe to the Newsletter
Name	Email

Previous Features