Beyond Metrical Prosody: New Rhythms in US and German (Post-) Modern Poetry

May 17-19, 2018, Berlin

Recent criticism (Charles Hartman, Richard Cureton, Donald Wesling, Alan Holder, Richard Andrews) has discussed the use of free verse in American poetry from Walt Whitman onwards and investigated German innovations in lyric prosody, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the strong and continual influence of American lyric experiments on German post-WWII poetry.

The aim of our conference is twofold: It divides recent developments in American poetry into five stages (modernist poetry/imagism, jazz poetry, beat poetry/black mountain school, pop poetry and poetry slam) and, at the same time, traces the creative reception of new (American) prosodic rhythms in German poetry in each of the stages.

Following in the footsteps of Walt Whitman who attempted to forge poetry based on the rhythms of American speech and Ezra Pound’s credo to “make it new,” modern poets were seeking for postmetrical poetic prosody. And after Pound “set the pattern of cadence for modern verse” (George Steiner), Imagists like William Carlos Williams, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and Amy Lowell demanded from poets “to create new rhythms – as the expression of new moods.” Often these new rhythms were jazz-influenced, as in Langston Hughes’ work, W.C. Williams’ early verse, and in contemporary Yusef Komunyakaa’s poetry. Sometimes poets also sought a visual correlative for these new rhythms: William Carlos Williams’ triadic line, Olson’s composition by field, Ginsberg’s “long-line poetry” in “Howl,” Anne Waldman’s propulsive poetry, and even the very short lines of poets such as Kay Ryan reflect efforts to render distinct free verse prosodies in print.

Since the 1950s, these new rhythmic techniques have become highly influential in German lyric poetry through translations and essays by Walter Höllerer, Klaus Reichert, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ernst Jandl, and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. The poems of Ernst Jandl, Friederike Mayröcker, Jürgen Theobaldy, Nicolas Born, Karl Krolow, Günter Herburger, Karin Kiwus, and Christoph Derschau exhibit a profound influence by the new, (post-)modern American poetry. A systematic study of the German-American prosodic renewal, however, has not yet been made. Our conference intends to fill this gap and aims at systematically analyzing new rhythms in the poetry of the German-American (post-)modern era.

The full program can be found below, and the poster downloaded in the sidebar. Please feel free to download the flyer with the complete program here.

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