'New' poetry can mean two things. When Ezra Pound said 'make it new' he was willing the advent of Modernism, the birth of a consciousness transformed by the disintegrations and realities of the 20th century. But 'new' or 'contemporary' poetry refers more simply to changes in fashion, the growing up of new groups of designers and a new generation of consumers. Like film images or pop songs, the new in this sense is recognisably different from the poetry scene a generation ago, but how much has happened except that times have changed and required something else to be characteristic of them?

LRB 30 December 1982 | PDF Download