Paul Blackburn

Jonathan Curley (College of New Jersey)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 24 Nov 1926
Died 13 Sep 1971
Activity 1946-1971

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Poet
Translator

Resources

Blackburn's Works

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Paul Blackburn is one of the lesser recognized but most significant 20th century American poets. Adapting the oratorical style of Walt Whitman and developing a personalized poetics of consciousness and observation which rejects formalism, closure, and narrative linearity for immediacy, contingency, and the swerves of sensation and subjective surprises, he is most closely linked to Charles Olson and the Black Mountain School, although he roundly rejected the designation. Blackburn’s achievement is the liberation of lyrical verse from overly standardized articulation, sentimental flourish, and a mode of easy and light arrangement. In his grasp, the lyric relies on colloquial, questing expression, a seeming casualness which some critics have mistakenly assumed to be unmediated and artless.…

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1717 words

Citation: Curley, Jonathan. "Paul Blackburn". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 May 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=428, accessed 21 November 2024.]