POETRY SCHOOLS AND MOVEMENTS
SCHOOL/MOVEMENT
QUALITIES
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Began in New York’s African-American community during the 1920s and early
1930s. Its writers include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon
Johnson, Claude McKay, and Arna Bontemps. The qualities of this movement
were:

Social fairness for African Americans

Supposed to uplift African Americans or cause change

Racism and racial violence in America versus racial pride and standing
tall
IMAGIST
An early 20th-century poetic movement that focused on the importance of
imagery alone. T.E. Hulme, H.D., and William Carlos Williams were notable. The
qualities of this movement were:

Free verse

Always focused on a clear series of images, interesting and original

Word choices were specific, not vague or abstract

Often “paused” a moment in time and examined the images in that
moment
MODERNIST
A broadly defined multinational cultural movement (or series of movements)
that took hold in the late 19th century and reached its most radical peak on the
eve of World War I. It grew out of the philosophical, scientific, political, and
ideological shifts that followed the Industrial Revolution, up to World War I and
its aftermath. Poets most often associated with Modernism include H.D., W.H.
Auden, Hart Crane, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. The qualities of
this movement were:
LANGUAGE POETRY

Do something “new”, something never been done before

Reject “typical” poetry

Avoid clichés at all costs

Not too positive or romantic, but not despairing either
Taking its name from the magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce
Andrews (L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E), Language poetry is a poetry movement that
emerged in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as a response to mainstream
American poetry. It developed from diverse communities of poets in San
Francisco and New York. Rather than emphasizing traditional poetic techniques,
Language poetry tends to draw the reader’s attention to the uses of language
in a poem that contribute to the creation of meaning. The writing associated
with language poetry, including that by Michael Palmer, Lyn Hejinian, Ron
Silliman, Susan Howe, Rae Armantrout, and many others, is typical of this
movement. The qualities of this movement were:

Word play, puns, etc.

Sound play

Attention to meter and rhyme
POETRY SCHOOLS AND MOVEMENTS

ROMANTIC
Double meanings
A poetic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. English poets such
as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and George Gordon, Lord Byron were writers of this time. The qualities
of this movement were:

Focus on the self, one’s feelings and internal life (inside their own
hearts and heads)

Focus on nature and how nature is connected to mankind and
beautiful

SPOKEN WORD
Often very clear in rhyme, form, stanza, etc. VERY FORMAL!
A broad designation for poetry intended for performance. Though some
spoken word poetry may also be published on the page, the genre has its roots
in oral traditions and performance. Much like slam, spoken word is poetry that
is performed. See Murdoch Burnett, Kevin Coval, and Cristin O’Keefe
Aptowicz for examples of spoken word performers. The qualities of this
movement were:

Characterized by rhyme, repetition, improvisation, and word play

Frequently refer to issues of social justice, politics, race, and
community.

RENAISSANCE/ELIZABETHAN
Free verse
The period coinciding with the reign of England’s Queen Elizabeth I (1558–
1603). Defining works include Edmund Spenser’s The Shephearde’s
Calendar and The Faerie Queene, the sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney and William
Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Raleigh’s lyrics. The qualities of this movement
were:
BEAT

Idealistic and romanticized everything, even the mundane

Joy in life, beauty in life, everything is luxurious and lovely

Regular meter and rhyme, often iambic form pieces

Loads of metaphor and allusions
A national group of poets who emerged from San Francisco’s literary
counterculture in the 1950s. Its ranks included Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder. The qualities of this movement
were:

Free verse

Focuses on Native American and Zen philosophy (being one with the
universe)

Rejects the typical American middle class ideals (happy little suburban
families all pretending to be perfect and happy)

CONFESSIONAL
Breaking rules of poetry
Vividly self-revelatory verse associated with a number of American poets writing
in the 1950s and 1960s, including Robert Lowell, W.D. Snodgrass, Sylvia
POETRY SCHOOLS AND MOVEMENTS
Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman. The qualities of this movement were:

Poet confesses secrets, shames, suffering, fears, etc.

Poet confesses love, secret hopes

This is a confession but a POEM, so it must walk the line between not
being a journal entry and still being clear
FLARF
Originally a prank on the scam contest sponsored by the organization
Poetry.com, the experimental poetry movement flarf has slowly assumed a
serious position as a new kind of Internet-based poetic practice. Original
members of the “Flarfist Collective” include Sullivan,Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem
Mohammad, and Nada Gordon. The qualities of this movement are:

Celebrates deliberately bad or “incorrect” poetry

forcing clichés, swear words, onomatopoeia, and other linguistic
aberrations into poetic shape

SYMBOLISM
Odd juxtapositions and grammatical inaccuracies
A group of late 19th-century French writers, including Arthur Rimbaud and
Stéphane Mallarmé, who favored dreams, visions, and the associative powers of
the imagination in their poetry.

All symbols, all the time

The poem must have a holistic meaning, but also each symbol must
have meaning

Symbols should be fresh, interesting and powerful! No cliché!
Your tasks:
1. Write a poem in the style and topics of the movement you are
assigned as a group. These poems must be 15-20 lines long, use at
least three figurative language examples and should be artful, creative,
interesting, and have great word choices.
2. Independently, read the poem I’ve given out to determine what
school it is from and provide three specific quotes/evidence for your
argument in a clear, intelligent paragraph below.
POETRY SCHOOLS AND MOVEMENTS
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