12. BEATS VS. NYS

The new contemporary writing comes from the Beats and the New York School poets during the 50’s through 70’s. Both were ironic poetry movements heavily influenced by their surroundings, generation, and social circles.

The Beats was a radical group of writers that believed poetry was an escape from oneself and their conception of a poem as a perfectible object. Wikipedia defines these poets characterized as at best only a passing fad which had been largely fueled by media-attention. The Beat literature is believed to have changed the establishment through their radical rebellion. One of the poets during this time was Allen Ginsberg. In his poem “A Supermarket in California” is an expression of this time. He writes about a trip to the grocery store interlacing influential poets throughout his poem. He brings the idea of Walt Whitman as a customer of in a modern day grocery store. “I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meat in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.” (line 4). He imagination of this idea is new to the poetry movement by combing imagination into the real life at the same time. Being a Beat poet Ginsberg uses this form of expression new to the established poetry before him.

The New York School poets is believed their work was a reaction to the Confessionalist movement. This poetry has been defined to be light, violent, or observational and their style to be worldly. The poets wrote in manners of word paintings, often using vivid and visual imagery. They were inspired through the contemporary avant-garde art movements and their friends of the New York City art world's vanguard circle. The poetry was serious as well as ironic. Frank O’Hara’s a New York poet wrote “Ave Maria.” The poems words were written in jagged fragments of sentences, forcing the reader to take in each burst of words one at a time, slowing the mind’s progress down the page. The format was not the only contemporary component of this poem. It was an extreme poem clearly written from that radical generation. To write anything against authority and being an individual is true to this time.

Both these movements created a new set of contemporary poems that rebelled against not only society but the traditional forms of poetry before them.