Ebook: Counter-revolution of the Word: the Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-1960

During the Cold War an unlikely coalition of poets, editors, and politicians converged in an attempt to discredit--if not destroy--the American modernist avant-garde. Ideologically diverse yet willing to bespeak their hatred of modern poetry through the rhetoric of anticommunism, these ""anticommunist antimodernists, "" as Alan Filreis dubs them, joined associations such as the League for Sanity in Poetry to decry the modernist ""conspiracy"" against form and language. In Counter-revolution of the Word Filreis narrates the story of this movement and assesses its effect on American poetry.;Preface; Acknowledgments; PART I. THE FIFTIES' THIRTIES; 1 Better Rethink Your Aesthetics; 2 The Revolt against Revolt; 3 Guilty Are Those Who Are Punished; 4 Repressive Rereadings; 5 An Underground of the Unpublishable; 6 Anti-Anticommunist Poetics; PART II. ANTICOMMUNIST ANTIMODERNISM; 7 Poetry in the Hour of Need; 8 Invasion of the Modernists; 9 Deep Pinks, Medium Pinks, Door Openers; 10 Hard Times in Xanadu; 11 Lyricism, Freedom, and Art Education; 12 Formlessness Is Godlessness; 13 The Good Grammar of Citizenship; Notes; Permissions; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M.