Part 1: Backgrounds - America, the poem and the 20th century The modernist experiment - imagism, objectivism and some major innovators - H.D.Zukofsky, Oppen, Reznikoff, Niedecker, Fletcher, Aiken, Pound, Williams, Stevens Part 2: In search of a past - the fugitive movement and the major traditionalists Ransom, Tate, Davidson, Warren, J.P.Bishop, Berry, Dickey, Winters, Cunningham, Eberhart, Frost, Robinson, Jeffers Part 3: The traditions of Whitman - other poets from between the wars Sandburg, Lindsay, Masters, Rexroth, MacLeish, Fearing, Patchen, Hughes, Johnson, Cullen, Tolson, Hayden, Brooks Part 4: The question of black poetry Moore, Wylie, Millay, Miles, Bogan, Adams, Cummings, Rukeyser, Riding, Crane; formalists and confessionals Part 5: American poetry since World War II Bishop, Roethke, Lowell, Berryman, Plath 6. Beats, prophets and aesthetes - American poetry since World War II Olson, J.Williams, Levertov, Blackburn, Wieners, Creeley, Dorn, Duncan, Ferlinghetti, Everson, Spicer, Lamantia, Whalen, McClure, Synder, Ginsberg, Corso, Bukowski, Baraka, Kaufman, Joans, Evans, Sanchez, Giovanni, Mahubuti, Karenga, Nelson, O'Hara, Guest, Schuyler, Berrigan, Koch, Ashbery, Merrill Appendix: the problem of literary nationality - the case of T.S.Eliot