The Black Mountain poets, also called projectivist poets, were a group of mid-20th-century

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

''avant-garde'' or

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

poets based at

Black Mountain College Black Mountain College was a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The coll ...

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

Historical background and definition

Although it lasted only twenty-three years (1933–1956) and enrolled fewer than 1,200 students,

was one of the most fabled experimental institutions in art education and practice. It launched a remarkable number of the artists who spearheaded the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

in the America of the 1960s. It boasted an extraordinary curriculum in the

visual The visual system is the physiological basis of visual perception (the ability to detect and process light). The system detects, transduces and interprets information concerning light within the visible range to construct an image and buil ...

literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...

, and

performing arts The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which involve the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. P ...

. The literary movement traditionally described as the "Black Mountain Poets" centered around

Charles Olson Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist United States poetry, American poet who was a link between earlier Literary modernism, modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams an ...

, who became a teacher at the college in 1948.

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than 60 books. He is associated with the Black Mountain poets, although his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. Creeley was close with Charle ...

, who worked as a teacher and editor of the '' Black Mountain Review'' for two years, is considered to be another major figure. Creeley moved to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in 1957. There, he acted as a link between the Black Mountain poets and the

Beat Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of inte ...

s, many of whom he had published in the review. Members of the Black Mountain Poets include students and teachers at Black Mountain, together with their friends and correspondents. The term was first coined by Donald Allen in his anthology '' The New American Poetry 1945–1960'' (which divides the poets included in its pages into various ''schools''). He included Olson, Creeley, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan,

Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her p ...

, Larry Eigner, Joel Oppenheimer, Jonathan Williams, Paul Blackburn, and Paul Carroll in its members. Allen's definition of the Black Mountain poets proved to be crucial: it established a legacy and promoted their literary influence worldwide. However, the exact definition of the group is considered disputable. Olson described the term as "bullshit" and stated that they never considered themselves a particular "clique" or had a particular form of

poetics Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to poetry, though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly. Poetics is distinguished from hermeneu ...

. Other principal figures often included in the Black Mountain poets include John Wieners, M. C. Richards, Hilda Morley, Francine du Plessix Gray, Fielding Dawson,

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (September 9, 1911 – August 2, 1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the ...

, and

Arthur Penn Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American filmmaker, theatre director, and producer. He was a three-time Academy Award nominee for Academy Award for Best Director, Best Director, and a Tony Awards, Tony Awa ...

Poetics

The Black Mountain poets were largely free of literary convention, a feature which defined contemporary American poets. Their work became characterized by open form. Olson's pedagogical approach to poetry emphasized the importance of personal experience and direct observation, something which greatly influenced the Black Mountain poets. Many of the Black Mountain poets, including Levertov, Duncan, and Dorn, explored individual agency's potential to affect collective change through their political poetry.

Projective verse

1950 Events January * January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed. * January 5 – 1950 Sverdlovsk plane crash, Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 ...

, Charles Olson published his seminal essay, '' Projective Verse''. In this, he called for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should reflect exactly the content of the poem. This form was to be based on the line, and each line was to be a unit of breath and of utterance. Olson felt that English poetry had become restricted by meter, syntax and rhyme instead of embracing the more natural constraints of breath and syllables which he felt would define true American poetics. The content was to consist of "one perception immediately and directly (leading) to a further perception". This essay was to become a kind of ''de facto'' manifesto for the Black Mountain poets. One of the effects of narrowing the unit of structure in the poem down to what could fit within an utterance was that the Black Mountain poets developed a distinctive style of poetic diction (e.g. "yr" for "your").

Legacy

Apart from their strong interconnections with the Beats, the Black Mountain poets influenced the course of later American poetry via their importance for the poets later identified with the

Language School A language school is a school where one studies a foreign language. Classes at a language school are usually geared towards, for example, communicative competence in a foreign language. Language learning in such schools typically supplements fo ...

. They were also important for the development of the innovative

British Poetry Revival The British Poetry Revival is the general name now given to a loose list of poetry groups and movements, movement in the United Kingdom that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. The term was a neologism first used in 1964, postulating a New Br ...

of the 1960s, as evidenced by such poets as

Tom Raworth Thomas Moore Raworth (19 July 1938 – 8 February 2017) was an English-Irish poet, publisher, editor, and teacher who published over 40 books of poetry and prose during his life. His work has been translated and published in many countries. Rawor ...

and J. H. Prynne. In

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, the

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

-based '' TISH'' group, including

George Bowering George Harry Bowering, (born December 1, 1935) is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Life and career Bowering was born in Penticton, British Columbia, and rai ...

and Daphne Marlatt, were heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets. Modern projectivist poets include Charles Potts.

References

External links