Edward Halsey Foster

An experimental school of poetry and its leading proponents

5 x 7, 206 pages
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-014-6, $34.95s

ABOUT THE BOOK

Understanding the Black Mountain Poets introduces readers to the experimental school of postwar poetry and the three poets who led its pursuits—Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan. While critics debate who should be numbered among the school's members and even what the label "Black Mountain" implies, Edward Halsey Foster focuses on the first—and foremost—of its poets. Conceding that Olson, Creeley, and Duncan were radically different from one another in many respects, Foster argues that they were bound together by their reliance on Ralph Waldo Emerson for the principles that underlie their work.

Foster summarizes the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the Black Mountain school and traces the strain of Emersonian, expressionist poetics that are evident in the school's manifesto. He then devotes individual chapters to the work of Olson, Creeley, and Duncan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward Halsey Foster is professor of English and American literature at the Stevens Institute of Technology and editor of Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry Author of Understanding the Beats, Foster has served as a visiting professor at Drew University, the University of Istanbul, and Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Understanding the Beats