Junction Books

Black Mountain College was a grand experiment. Founded in 1933 by former faculty members of Florida’s Rollins College, the institution was named for its locationBlack Mountain, North Carolina. The purpose of the school was to apply John Dewey’s principles of education to real life and to situate art as the centerpiece and foundation of a liberal arts education. Architect Buckminster Fuller taught at the college, as did dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage. Poetry also owes a heavy debt to the college, thanks to the efforts of a group known appropriately as the Black Mountain poets.Poet Charles Olson, who coined the idea “postmodern” in 1949, was an important leader of the group, thanks to the publication of his 1950 essay Projective Verse. This piece called for a new type of poetry that replaced classic forms with an improvised structure that reflected the content of the poem. Each line should exist of “a unit of breath and of utterance.” The other Black Mountain poets took this essay as their manifesto. Among their number were Larry Eigner, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Paul Blackburn, Hilda Morley, Denise Levertov, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Creeley, and Jonathan Williams. (more…)

Nothing is better than discovering a new favorite poet. Well, some people might disagree, but probably not the readers of this site. One of the best ways to explore a variety of poets is through a poetry anthology. Their higher prices belie their true value: offering you tantalizing tastes of fresh new voices and ideas. Here are a few of our recent favorites.Poems for the Millenium Vol. 3: The University of California Book of Romantic & Postromantic Poetry, ed. Jeffrey Robinson & Jerome Rothenburg, 80: For editors Jeffrey Robinson and Jerome Rothenberg, romanticism in poetry is defined as “experimental and visionary.” The poetry in this collection stems from different eras of the twentieth century and offers numerous experiments with form, sound, and imagery from both expected (Samuel Beckett, James Joyce) and unexpected (John Cage, Nathaniel Mackey). (more…)