Robert Lowell both resisted and embraced the mantle of public poet. One way of tracking this ambivalence in Lowell’s poetics is by following the developments in his war poems. Though Lowell, along with Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill, is credited with pivoting poetry from the mannered verse culture of the 1950s to the autobiographical experiments of the 1960s, more recent appraisals of Lowell find a complicated grappling with whiteness and with overlapping historical and personal selves. The events of Lowell’s biography provide one rich context for thinking about his poetry’s treatment of war. Yet war is not only the near-constant background for Lowell’s life and the theater for his political engagement. It is also a spur to Lowell’s incessant revision of his poetic methods and commitments to verse forms. Focusing on war helps to bring Lowell’s prosodic changes into relief.

This chapter focuses on one major change in African American poetry of the 1980s: the propping open of doors to predominantly white cultural institutions for (certain) African American poets. The author refers to three overlapping sites of power: (historically white) academic institutions that train critics and poets, which began embracing more Black students and faculty; publishing venues that selectively promoted certain Black poets, which include presses operated by white universities; and white-run awards-granting bodies, which started to honor a few more Black poets. All shifted their approaches to Black poetry throughout the 1980s – both helping and hindering Black poets.