The New Poetry

By July of 1913, the Literary Digest had begun to speak of "a boom in poetry. " For the next several years, American poetry enjoyed an extraordinary moment combining popular currency and experimental energy that permanently altered its role in the nation's culture. Though this remarkable reversal of fortune has been given other names by historians, its participants knew it simply as "the New Poetry" or "the New Verse. " The movement was catalyzed most directly by the founding of the monthly periodical Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which began in Chicago in October 1912 and still thrives a century later. Though the New Verse was notably eclectic in style, we can identify four strongly interdependent categories of formal innovation that its participants employed in all manner of combination: flexible rhythms, simplified syntax and diction, organic structure, and direct description.