Postmodern American Poetry

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Postmodern American Poetry is a poetry anthology edited by Paul Hoover and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1994. A substantially revised second edition in 2012 removed some poets and added many others, incorporating additional American poetry movements which came to prominence in the 21st century.

The introduction identifies the use of postmodern with its early mention by Charles Olson, and identifies the field chosen as experimental poetry from after 1945. The book contains, besides poems, about 20 short essays on poetics.

The first edition joined two other collections which appeared at that time: From the Other Side of the Century: "A New American Poetry, 1960-1990" (1994; edited by Douglas Messerli) and American Poetry Since 1950 (1993; edited by Eliot Weinberger).

The anthology, the goal of which is to "fully represent the movements of American avant-garde poetry", includes representatives from the Beat and New York School poets, the Projectivists, "deep image" poets, language and performance poetry, and various experimentalists. The second edition adds works associated with Newlipo, conceptual poetry, and cyberpoetry/Flarf.

The 1994 edition consists of 411 poems by 103 poets and essays by 18 authors, including some of the poets who also have poetry in the book.

(poets arranged in chronological order by birth year)

ISBN 0-393-31090-6 (paperback)

• 1994 in poetry
• Postmodern literature

• Whose New American Poetry?: Anthologizing in the Nineties
• Experimentations in Abstract Postmodern Poetry