The poetry of self

Poetry of self tends toward direct address or monologue. At its most intense, it states a condition of soul. The settings, though present, do not play definitive roles. This poetry may be psychological or spiritual, aspiring to a timeless realm. It may also, however, undercut spiritual certainty by referring all meaning back to language. Within this large grouping, therefore, one may find somewhat romantic, expressive poetry, but also language-based poems that question the very concepts of identity and meaning, seeing these as constructs.

Balancing these concerns, John Ashbery has said that he is interested in "the experience of experience," or what filters through his consciousness, rather than what actually happened. His "Soonest Mended" (1970) depicts a reality "out there" lying loose and seemingly simple, but lethal as a floor on which wheat and chaff (like human lives, or Walt Whitman's leaves of grass) are winnowed:

...underneath the talk lies The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.

The enigmatic, classically trained W.S. Merwin (1927- ) continues to produce volumes of haunting subjective poetry. Merwin's poem "The River of Bees" (1967) ends:

On the door it says what to do to survive But we were not born to survive Only to live

The word "only" ironically underscores how difficult it is to live fully as human beings, a nobler pursuit than mere survival. Both Ashbery and Merwin, precursors of the current generation of poets of self, characteristically write monologues detached from explicit contexts or narratives. Merwin's haunting existential lyrics plumb psychological depths, while Ashbery's unexpected use of words from many registers of human endeavor – psychology, farming, philosophy – looks forward to the Language School.

Recent poets of self have pushed more deeply into a phenomenological awareness of consciousness played out moment by moment. For Ann Lauterbach (1942- ), the poem is an extension of the mind in action; she has said that her poetry is "an act of self-construction, the voice its threshold." Language poet Lyn Hejinian (1941- ) expresses the movement of consciousness in her autobiographical prose poem My Life (1987), which employs disjunction, surprising leaps, and chance intersections: "I picture an idea at the moment I come to it, our collision." Rae Armantrout (1947- ) uses silences and subtle, oblique associative clusters; the title poem of her volume Necromance (1991) warns that "emphatic / precision / is revealed as / hostility." Another experimental poet, Leslie Scalapino (1947- ), writes poems as an "examination of the mind in the process of whatever it's creating."

Much experimental poetry of self is elliptical, nonlinear, nonnarrative, and nonobjective; at its best, it is, however, not solipsistic but rather circles around an "absent center." Poetry of self often involves a public performance. In the case of women poets, the erasures, notions of silence, and disjunctions are often associated with Julia Kristeva and other French feminist theoreticians. Poet Susan Howe (1937- ), who has developed a complex visual poetics to interweave the historical and personal, has noted the difficulty of tracing back female lines in archives and genealogies and the erasure of women in cultural history. For her, as a woman, "the gaps and silences are where you find yourself."

Contemporary American Literature By Kathryn VanSpanckeren

The United States is one of the most diverse nations in the world. Its dynamic population of about 300 million boasts more than 30 million foreign-born individuals who speak numerous languages and dialects. Some one million new immigrants arrive each year, many from Asia and Latin America.

Literature in the United States today is likewise dazzlingly diverse, exciting, and evolving. New voices have arisen from many quarters, challenging old ideas and adapting literary traditions to suit changing conditions of the national life. Social and economic advances have enabled previously underrepresented groups to express themselves more fully, while technological innovations have created a fast-moving public forum. Reading clubs proliferate, and book fairs, literary festivals, and "poetry slams" (events where youthful poets compete in performing their poetry) attract enthusiastic audiences. Selection of a new work for a book club can launch an unknown writer into the limelight overnight.

On a typical Sunday the list of best-selling books in the New York Times Book Review testifies to the extraordinary diversity of the current American literary scene. In January, 2006, for example, the list of paperback best-sellers included "genre" fiction – steamy romances by Nora Roberts, a new thriller by John Grisham, murder mysteries – alongside nonfiction science books by the anthropologist Jared Diamond, popular sociology by The New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell, and accounts of drug rehabilitation and crime. In the last category was a reprint of Truman Capote's groundbreaking In Cold Blood, a 1965 "nonfiction novel" that blurs the distinction between high literature and journalism and had recently been made into a film.

Books by non-American authors and books on international themes were also prominent on the list. Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini's searing novel, The Kite Runner, tells of childhood friends in Kabul separated by the rule of the Taliban, while Azar Nafisi's memoir, Reading Lolita in Teheran, poignantly recalls teaching great works of Western literature to young women in Iran. A third novel, Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (made into a movie), recounts a Japanese woman's life during World War II.

In addition, the best-seller list reveals the popularity of religious themes. According to Publishers Weekly, 2001 was the first year that Christian-themed books topped the sales lists in both fiction and nonfiction. Among the hardcover best-sellers of that exemplary Sunday in 2006, we find Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code and Anne Rice's tale Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

Beyond the Times' best-seller list, chain bookstores offer separate sections for major religions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and sometimes Hinduism.

In the Women's Literature section of bookstores one finds works by a "Third Wave" of feminists, a movement that usually refers to young women in their 20s and 30s who have grown up in an era of widely accepted social equality in the United States. Third Wave feminists feel sufficiently empowered to emphasize the individuality of choices women make. Often associated in the popular mind with a return to tradition and child-rearing, lipstick, and "feminine" styles, these young women have reclaimed the word "girl" – some decline to call themselves feminist. What is often called "chick lit" is a flourishing offshoot. Bridget Jones's Diary by the British writer Helen Fielding and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City featuring urban single women with romance in mind have spawned a popular genre among young women.

Nonfiction writers also examine the phenomenon of post-feminism. The Mommy Myth (2004) by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels analyzes the role of the media in the "mommy wars," while Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards' lively ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000) discusses women's activism in the age of the Internet. Caitlin Flanagan, a magazine writer who calls herself an "anti-feminist," explores conflicts between domestic life and professional life for women. Her 2004 essay in The Atlantic, "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement," an account of how professional women depend on immigrant women of a lower class for their childcare, triggered an enormous debate.

It is clear that American literature at the turn of the 21st century has become democratic and heterogeneous. Regionalism has flowered, and international, or "global," writers refract U.S. culture through foreign perspectives. Multiethnic writing continues to mine rich veins, and as each ethnic literature matures, it creates its own traditions. Creative nonfiction and memoir have flourished. The short story genre has gained luster, and the "short" short story has taken root. A new generation of playwrights continues the American tradition of exploring current social issues on stage. There is not space here in this brief survey to do justice to the glittering diversity of American literature today. Instead, one must consider general developments and representative figures.