Black Mountain Poems

Editor: Jonathan C. Creasy

Publisher: New Directions (2019)

Black Mountain College had an explosive influence on American poetry, music, art, craft, dance, and thought; it’s hard to imagine any other institution that was so utopian, rebellious, and experimental. Founded with the mission of creating rounded, complete people by balancing the arts and manual labor within a democratic, nonhierarchical structure, Black Mountain was a crucible of revolutionary literature. Although this artistic haven only existed from 1933 to 1956, Black Mountain helped inspire some of the most radical and significant midcentury American poets.

This anthology begins with the well-known Black Mountain Poets―Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Denise Levertov―but also includes the artist Josef Albers and the musician John Cage, as well as the often overlooked women associated with the college, M. C. Richards and Hilda Morley.

"Black Mountain grasped the dream of art as a lived condition rather than a hoarded possession."

–The New York Times

"The power of anthologies lies not only in the individual works themselves but in the relationships between them. To anthologize is to confront, and perhaps even subvert, the myth of the solitary writer. In Black Mountain Poems, editor Jonathan C. Creasy strongly engages in this type of rebellion. He is true to the nature of his subject: Black Mountain College radically pushed against glorified individualism and nourished a notion of art based on community. It is a sense of ‘scriptural communion,’ as Creasy calls it, that anchors this collection of 16 poets."

–Hyperallergic