History, memory, and the literary left [electronic resource]

In this nuanced revisionist history of modern American poetry, John Lowney investigates the Depression era's impact on late modernist American poetry from the socioeconomic crisis of the 1930's through the emergence of the new social movements of the 1960's. Informed by an ongoing scholarly reconsideration of 1930's American culture and concentrating on Left writers whose historical consciousness was profoundly shaped by the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, Lowney articulates the Left's challenges to national collective memory and redefines the importance of late modernism in American