Expanding the Field: Rethinking Projective Verse and Mid-Century American Poetry

full name / name of organization: 
The Charles Olson Society
contact email: 

The Charles Olson Society will sponsor a session at the annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, to be held at the University of Louisville, February 18-20, 2016. We are interested in abstracts pertaining to any aspect of mid-Century American poetics, but in particular those that build on and problematize the mechanics of projective verse. While "Projective Verse" has received ample treatment in studies concerning major poets like Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, other poets built on projective verse in their own ways, fashioning distinctive styles that, while tangentially related to projective verse, also created new poetic forms. Poets like Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Levertov, Diane Di Prima, or LeRoi Jones, among many others, all declared solidarity with projective verse while transforming the familiar mechanics of breath prosody or syllabic rhyme. What other styles have been missed by focusing too much on projective verse as dogma and not enough on projective verse as a conversation? What active transformations wrought not only a larger field for projective verse, but also a larger social field for American poetics?

Those interested should send a 250 word abstract to Joshua Hoeynck (jsh115@case.edu) no later than September 1st. Please include your academic affiliation (if any) and a brief biographical note with your abstract.