Title: Nuclear annihilation and contemporary American poetry
First published: 1996
Description: The eve of the second millennium falls fifty years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Looking across the spectrum of American poetry since 1945, John Gery explores the role that poets have begun to play in the nuclear age.

While their diverse voices join in protesting against the end of the world, poetry also embodies what Gery calls "the way of nothingness" in contemporary experience, an individual sense of human continuity paradoxically coupled with a global sense of impending annihilation.

The first full-length study of nuclear theory and American poetry, this book examines four distinct poetic approaches to nuclear culture - protest poetry, apocalyptic lyric poetry, psycho-historical poetry, and the poetry of uncertainty. Each is developed through a discussion of representative poems from a range of poets, including an extended study of works by Denise Levertov, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, and John Ashbery.

As a chorus of voices, Gery contends, these poets articulate both resistance to annihilation and an acceptance of the nuclear present.
Subjects: History and criticism, Literature and history, Nuclear warfare in literature, Atomic bomb in literature, End of the world in literature, American poetry, Nothing (Philosophy) in literature, Apocalyptic literature, History, American poetry, history and criticism, 20th century
Places: United States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS310.N83 G47 1996