JOE LOVE

ENGL 662-01 (CRN 15623)

Twentieth Century Poetry: Black Mountain

Fall 2009

Devin Johnston

Black Mountain College (1933-57) was a small experimental school in the mountains of

North Carolina. Founded in reaction to traditional education, it combined communal

living with an informal class structure, emphasizing a holistic approach to learning.

Though relatively short-lived, it fostered some of the most important creative work of the

twentieth century. Its faculty and students included artists, ceramicists, and photographers

such as Joseph and Anni Albers, Harry Callahan, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Franz

Kline, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg,

M.C. Richards, Ben Shahn, Aaron Siskin, Cy Twombly, and Peter Voulkos; the dancer

and choreographer Merce Cunningham; composers John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Stefan

Wolpe; film director Arthur Penn; engineer/inventor Buckminster Fuller; poets such as

Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Hilda Morley, Charles Olson, and Jonathan

Williams.

This graduate course addressed the history of Black Mountain College, its

educational philosophy, and its influence. Though it included all of the arts, its

particular focus was the aesthetics and practice of the school’s poets—teachers and

students—as well as those of poets more loosely associated with “Black Mountain

Poetry” as a movement. Requirements included individual presentations, a research

project, and final paper.