If you need a book that teaches you something about the development and features of a new generation of writers after the so-called "Modernists;" and if you need information about the difference between the "Modernists" and the "Post-Modernists," you might want to take this book to your hands.

From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945-1965 was a dissertation at the University of Virginia. The author is now professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of William Carlos Williams, an American Artist, Something to say: William Carlos Williams on Younger Poets, Mark Rothko: A Biography, and editor of Negotiation Theory and Praxis. His book From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945-1965, is now out of print.

Before I start with my review I want to recommend Breslin's preface, which employed an amusing tone and decreased the distance between author and reader immensely.

Breslin looks at the question of continuity from modern to contemporary poetry. He is concerned with throwing a look on "poetic procedures" that in 1980 are "beginning to look a little too easy, stiff, and predictable to younger poets." Breslin justifies his thesis that in the 50s and 60s an "antiformalist" revolt took place by employing a "historically informed criticism." (p.xiv) A very useful approach is that in Chapter I, "The End of the Line," Breslin sets up three generations of poets (roughly according to being born before 1900, and before and after 1920) and contrasts them in their claim for "new poetry." The first generation did not have to struggle with predecessors, yet the setting up of their own rules and the solitary, scantly acknowledged strive for new poetry was a nurturing ground for their work. The second, under the shadow of the first, lived in a death-bringing maelstrom of finding identity beyond their predecessors. Their escape was the New Criticism. The third generation that profited from both the break in literature the first generation had brought and from the receptive audience the second generation had produced, is his focus. He analyses their work and distinguishes them into traditionalist and "counterpoetic."

Thus, in the following chapters, he develops a long, and often very tedious, study on the poets of the fifties and sixties. In five chapters he writes about the main proponents of the Beat and the Confessional poets, the Black Mountain Group, the Deep image and the New York group, namely Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Denise Levertov, James Wright and Frank O'Hara.

Generally, Breslin's approach is to look at biography as well as poetry of the writer and he distinguishes him from his precedents. He also points out the singularity of the writer, which on the one hand keeps him from pressing his work into the mould of his thesis, yet also distracts from his approach.

The problem of oversimplification and reduction by choosing only a few poets out of many, Breslin manages in looking at the whole generation in Chapters 2 and 3 that set up the traditionalist and the counterpoetics. While these chapters in my opinion get lost in details and analyses of single poets, his studies of the five important proponents of this period are generally clear and sharply distinguished.

Personally I do not find his poem analyses very helpful. Ginsberg's "Howl," for example, is an in-depth study that links the poem conveniently to his life and the people who influenced him, but in the abundance of information I lost track of his argument. I also could not agree with all of his interpretations.

His last chapter "Our town: Poetry and Criticism in the Early Eighties" is an interesting outlook on the fourth generation. He now also provides a cultural background. It serves very well as a conclusion of his work.

I found his general ideas clear and he helped me much in understanding the period of time he was looking at, because his thesis is logical. Personally I liked his first chapter best, while the later ones put problems on me because they seemed to lack focus. Sometimes I missed the confirmation of his thesis of an "antiformalist" revolt.

I cannot say much about his style since I am a foreigner and you might not share my problems. There are a few spelling mistakes in the book. Breslin introduces every chapter with one or a few quotes that illuminate the contents of the chapter, which helps to clarify the short chapter titles, so I generally knew ahead what he wants to talk about. Sometimes his tone takes on a little determinism, but I guess that for a literary critic objectivism is very difficult.

Looking at a period in general is a difficult task and I think Breslin manages it very well not to oversimplify and generalize but never forgets to put his objects into a frame.

My opinion on this book is a positive one, yet I have some objections, and I think that this book is not very helpful, if you are not very well acquainted with authors and works he talks about. It is mainly a scholarly resource about twenty years of American literature in context of the twentieth century.