Michael Collier 
The Wesleyan Tradition 
Four Decades of American Poetry

<P>Since issuing its first volumes in 1959, the Wesleyan poetry program has challenged the reigning aesthetic of the time and profoundly influenced the development of American poetry. One of the country’s oldest programs, its greatest achievement has been the publication of early works by yet undiscovered poetry who have since become major awarded Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes, National Book Awards, and many other honors. At a time when other programs are being phased out, Wesleyan takes this opportunity to celebrate its distinguished history and reaffirm its commitment to poetry with publication of The Wesleyan Tradition.</P><P>Drawing from some 250 volumes, editor Michael Collier documents the wide-ranging impact of these works. In his introduction, he describes the literary and cultural context of American poetics in more recent decades, tracing the evolution of the Deep Image and Confessional movements of the 50s and 60s, and exploring the emergence of the ‘prose lyric’ style. Although the success of the Wesleyan program has inspired its share of imitators, no other program has had such a fundamental impact. Works by the eighty-six poets included her both document and celebrate that contribution.</P>

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<P>MICHAEL COLLIER has won several awards and fellowships for his poetry, a ‘Discovery’ / The Nation award (1981), the 1988 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Thomas J. Watson fellowship, a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and an NEA creative writing fellowship. A graduate of Connecticut College (B.A. 1976) and the University of Arizona (M.F.A. 1979), Collier has traveled widely—from London to northern Africa to Siberia and Japan—and worked at various times as a house painter and a community activist. He is an assistant professor of English and associate director of creative writing at the University of Maryland and a visiting assistant professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He was director of the summer writers’ conference at Johns Hopkins in 1987 and coordinator of poetry programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1983-84. His first book, The Clasp and Other Poems, was published by Wesleyan in 1986.</P>