An Attempt at a List of Current Schools of Poetry


Since it's my view that the academic and commercial establishments are completely ignoring large segments of first-rate contemporary poetry, I've always felt that a list of currently active poetry schools would be of great value. Hence, this attempt at one. My hope is that others will augment and adjust it, and that we can arrive at some kind of intelligent, non-hierarchical, informal Master-List that just about everyone agrees covers the field.

This isn't my first such list. A few years ago I had one in Small Press Review as a guest editorial. Alas, it generated next to no interest, only two people writing me about it. Too many poets and poetry-readers have a prejudice against pigeon-holing. I didn't give up, though, but later I posted a version of my list at the Internet poetics discussion group hosted by SUNY, Buffalo, and did better, getting several quite helpful responses--enough to convince me it'd be worthwhile to carry on here. Once the list seems set, I will put a summary of it in the dictionary which is the central goal of Comprepoetica, as well as individual entries on most, or all, the schools we come up with. Then who knows what might happen? Perhaps even the publication at last of a truly catholic anthology of current American poetry! In any event, here's my list:

MAINSTREAM POETRY

What's in all the standard anthologies; Vendler-certified; many sub-schools, some of which are:

  • Iowa-Workshop Poetry (e.g., Bell)

  • Surrealist Poetry (e.g., Bly)

  • Ecological Poetry (e.g., Snyder)

  • Jump-Cut Poetry (e.g., Ashbery)

    EASY-STREAM POETRY

    A variety of poetry that, based on its popularity, ought to be mainstream but is shut out of the major anthologies because academics look down on it.

  • Light Verse

  • Haiku

    LANGUAGE POETRY

    The poetry in *In the American Tree*, the Messerli anthology, etc.; Perloff-certified; several sub-schools that I lack the knowledge to untangle

    CONTRA-GENTEEL POETRY

    All the 'unrefined" plain-writing poets inspired by W.C. Williams, Frank O'Hara, the Beats, Bukowski. (Note: I include the social identity poets in this school--but, of course, many poets, particularly the social identity, are in more than one group--Maya Angelou, for instance, seems to me at times Mainstream, and at times Contra-Genteel.) The main sub-schools I know of are:

  • Conversationalist Poetry (e.g., the many followers of Frank O'Hara)

  • Beat Poetry (e.g., Gregory Corso, the many followers of Charles Bukowski), with several sub-divisions

  • Social Identity Poetry (e.g., Wanda Coleman, Vietnam War poetry, all forms of "ethnic poetry")

  • Pop-Rhyme, which sudivides into Rap and the Neo-James- Whitcomb-Reilly School (yes, I need a less condescending name for this group--and probably for the Iowa-Workshop school)

  • Wild-Woman Poetry (e.g., Cheryl Townsend--and, yes, this one could use a better name, too)

    NEOFORMALIST POETRY

    Poetry continuing the techniques of traditional English poetry, especially meter.

    PLURAESTHETIC POETRY

    Any poetry that mixes expressive modalities:

  • Visual Poetry (e.g., Karl Kempton)

  • Sound Poetry (e.g., Steve McCaffery), also with three major and many smaller sub-divisions

  • Performance Poetry (e.g., Jack Foley)

  • Mathematical Poetry (e.g., LeRoy Gorman)

  • Flow-Chart Poetry (I've seen some but don't remember the name of anyone who does it)

  • Compucentric Poetry, or poetry using computer language (e.g., Alan Sondheim)

  • Polylingual Poetry (e.g., John M. Bennett, Susan Smith Nash, Sheila Murphy)

    INFRAVERBAL POETRY

    Poetry whose focus is on textual elements smaller than words-- letters and punctuation marks, for the most part. Taxonomically, I consider this school a sub-group of Language Poetry, but it seems sufficiently off on its own to rank as a separate school for the purposes of this list (which is not intended as a formal taxonomy); James Joyce and Lewis Carroll are infraverbal poetry's chief forebears--and E. E. Cummings, whom I've come to consider more an infraverbal than a visual poet.

    HYPERTEXTUAL POETRY

    I know almost nothing about this. It might just be pluraesthetic poetry in a new medium.

    There they are, the eight main schools of poetry I'm aware of (or remember). Please use the form below for any additions, corrections, comments?

                                                                                                                                         Bob Grumman

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