The New American Poetry: Fifty Years Later is a collection of critical essays on Donald Allen’s 1960 seminal anthology, The New American Poetry, an anthology that Marjorie Perloff once called “the fountainhead of radical American poetics.” The New American Poetry is referred to in every literary history of post-World War II American poetry. Allen’s anthology has reached its fiftieth anniversary, providing a unique time for reflection and reevaluation of this preeminent collection. As we know, Allen’s anthology was groundbreaking—it was the first to distribute widely the poetry and theoretical positions of poets such as Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, and it was the first to categorize these poets by the schools (Black Mountain, New York School, San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beats) by which they are known today. Over the course of fifty years, this categorization of poets into schools has become one of the major, if not only way, that The New American Poetry is remembered or valued; one certain goal of this volume, as one reviewer invites, is to “pry The New American Poetry out from the hoary platitudes that have encrusted it.” To this point critics mostly have examined The New American Poetry as an anthology; former treatments of The New American Poetry look at it intently as a whole. Though the almost singularly-focused study of its construction and, less often, reception has lent a great deal of documented, highly visible and debated material in which to consider, we have been left with certain notions about its relevance that have become imbued ultimately in the collective critical consciousness of postmodernity. This volume, however, goes beyond the analysis of construction and reception and achieves something distinctive, extendingthose former treatments by treading on the paths they create. This volume aims to discover another sense of “radical” that Perloff articulated—rather than a radical that departs markedly from the usual, we invite consideration of The New American Poetry that isradical in the sense of root, of harboring something fundamental, something inherent, as we uncover and trace further elements correlated with its widespread influence over the last fifty years.
The social arrangements with which we are familiar work fairly well for most of us most of the time. We work, we earn, we pay taxes. We engage professionals when we need their advice. We expect that there will be doctors whose expertise can be relied upon if we are ill, that there will be schools staffed with knowledgeable teachers and courts presided over by fair judges. We vote for politicians who offer policies we favour. We require government to provide us with security, protect our freedom and assist those of us who cannot help themselves. These social arrangements rest on some shared assumptions and values. They assume that people are, by and large, free, self-determining persons who respect each other's rights and independence, and co-operate rationally and productively with each other. Our social arrangements are challenged when this assumption does not hold. What policies should government have in place for people who are not independent, or not rational, or not co-operative, or not productive? If, by some catastrophe, through accident, disability or mental illness, you became such a person, how should you be dealt with by professionals and government services? If, on the other hand, you are a professional, how should you go about making decisions for clients who are not well placed to make decisions for themselves? Are there standards of professional ethics that can deal with this situation? Are there ethical standards that can be applied by managers of service organizations, or by policy writers, or by government officials? Are there ethical standards that concerned citizens should demand of government, of service organizations and of professionals who provide for vulnerable people? Drawing on the stories of people with disabilities and their service providers, Paul Jewell explores ethical theories, tests their practical application, and offers strategies essential to practitioners, managers, policy-makers and professionals who provide services to people with disabilities.
I suffer with depression. Sometimes I want to take my life because of the downward spiral that I find myself in. In this book, I explain the basis of my depression, and how I've manage to live through it. I write ''manage'' because people suffering with depression don''t actually ''live'' a life. They survive, they grind and they ''hold on''. For those coping with depression, life is a constantly a struggle, and for some, it can be a losing struggle. This is the story of my life. It's about my experience of living with depression, but it's not a step-by-step guide on how to live with depression. In fact, I'm not sure you can "beat" depression or be cured from depression. This is a story of how one person living with depression gets through their days and long, long nights. The chapters are organized in chronological order through my school years, my first work experiences, and my arrival to and subsequent departure from university, at the age of 30. In the last two chapters, I write about my own experiences with suicide and my numerous sessions of talking with counsellors. The chapter on suicide was particularly hard to write. It took me back to a time where I never want to return too. The point of this chapter is to highlight and focus on what goes through the mind of a person who is contemplating killing themselves. I want the reader to know, to understand, that before reaching that fateful decision, a person suffering with depression has had a long, agonising journey and along the way, they fight and cling on to any last vestige of life. Millions of people around the world share the symptoms of depression. In the last chapter, I talk about a subject that rarely comes to the fore in the mind of someone suffering with depression their hopes and aspirations.
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