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A shift away from an assumption that traditional forms, ideas, and history can provide meaning and continuity to human life has occurred in the contemporary literary imagination throughout many parts of the world, including the United States. Events since World War II have produced a sense of history as discontinuous: Each act, emotion, and moment is seen as unique. Style and form now seem provisional, makeshift, reflexive of the process of composition and the writer's self-awareness. Familiar categories of expression are suspect; originality is becoming a new tradition.

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It is not hard to find historical causes for this disassociated sensibility in the United States. World War 11 itself, the rise of anonymity and consumerism in a mass urban society, the protest movements of the 1960s. the decade-long Vietnam conflict, the Cold War, environmental threats - the catalog of shocks to American culture is long and varied. The change that has most transformed American society, however, has been the rise of the mass media and mass culture. First radio, then movies, and now an all- powerful, ubiquitous television presence have changed American life at its roots. From a private, literate, elite culture based on the book, the eye, and reading, the United States has become a media culture attuned to the voice on the radio, the music of compact discs and cassettes, film, and the images on the television screen.

American poetry has been directly influenced by mass media and electronic technology. Films, videotapes, and tape recordings of poetry readings and interviews with poets have become available, and new inexpensive photographic methods of printing have encouraged young poets to self-publish and young editors to begin literary magazines - of which there are now well over 2,000. From the late 1950s to the present, Americans have been increasingly aware that technology, so useful in itself, presents dangers through the wrong kinds of striking images. To Americans seeking alternatives, poetry seems more relevant than before: It offers people a way to express subjective life and articulate the impact of technology and mass society' on the individual.

A host of styles, some regional, some associated with famous schools or poets, vie for attention; contemporary American poetry is decentralized, richly varied, and impossible to summarize. For the sake of discussion, however, it can be arranged along a spectrum, producing three overlapping camps - the traditional on one end, the idiosyncratic in the middle, and the experimental on the other end. Traditional poets have maintained or revitalized poetic traditions. Idiosyncratic poets have used both traditional and innovative techniques in creating unique voices. Experimental poets have courted new cultural styles.

Poetry after the Second World War also presents an impressive array of writers from all areas of society writing in an equally wide range of styles. The first important group to emerge were the so-called confessional poets including Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke and Deimore Schwartz. Unlike their modernist predecessors these poets left behind impersonal, hard-edged poetry for intense personal confessions, which were often presented in finely crafted poems, often in traditional forms. Sylvia Plath, who was one of Robert Lowell's students, used this confessional style to give a poetic portrayal of her psychological breakdown. Another important poet of the 1950s was Charles Olson who sought to break away from the traditional forms and subjects of poetry. His masters were Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams; he tried give a thorough poetic treatment of his hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts in The Maximus Poems (1953-1975).

The Beat Generation was perhaps best represented by its poets. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg (who also corresponded with Wiiiiam Carlos Williams). These poets took Whitman as their spiritual and literary father, and Ginsberg's poem Howl (1955) presents the anxieties of that time in the long lines - with an updated beat - of much of Whitman's poetry.

The Beats then went on to inspire some of the best black poets who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. These poets, such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) wrote strong, fighting poetry, often taking their poetic inspiration from the rhythms and feelings of Jazz. Another interesting development in American poetry is that of the Native Americans. Obviously, Native Americans had composed poetry for centuries, but only towards the end of the last century did large numbers of Native American poets begin to write in English.

Chicano (Mexican-American) poetry has also grown in importance over the past forty years. The Quinto Sol Publications, which publishes Chicano writing, was founded in 1967. Rudolfo Anaya, Cherrie Moraga and Gary Soto are among the most important Chicano writers. They write in both Spanish and English, often blending poetry and prose, written and oral traditions.

“This Is The Beat Generation”

The history of literature has been "landmarked" by countless movements of vaiying styles and direction. The Beat Page is dedicated to the movement that began in the early 1950's with a small and tightly connected group of young writers who demonstrated a care-free, often wreckless and unquestionably fresh approach to literature as well as a demonstrative social stance toward what was sometimes referred to as "The Establishment". The term "Beat" was reportedly coined by Jack Kerouac in the late 1940's, but became more common at about the time that writers like himself, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were beginning to get noticed. It was quickly becoming a slang term in America after World War II, meaning "exhausted" or "beat down" and provided this generation with a definitive label for their personal and social positions and perspectives.