Remapping America: The Epic Geography of Post-World War II American Poetry

Abstract

In post-World War II America, with international socialism in ruins and the conservative tradition virtually nonexistent, the liberal consensus emerged as the dominant ideology. Its optimism about America’s future was a result of the victory over fascism and the nation’s economic prosperity. Although history was rapidly unfolding as the United States established its “geopolitical dominance” (cf. Hunt 115–50) and as the Soviet Union sought control over Eastern Europe, the immediate postwar period seemed deceptively apolitical. With the postwar economic boom and the rise of the society of affluence, simmering social conflicts were largely kept outside the public consciousness. Radical movements such as the Popular Front of the 1930s dissolved. Many leftists embraced the liberal consensus, while others sided blindly with the Soviet Union, or withdrew from politics altogether. Those who did seek to maintain the legacy of the 1930s in the postwar world fell victim to redbaiting and often lost access to literary, cultural, and political institutions. The powerful liberal consensus associated radicalism with Stalinism, adding to the marginalization of leftist ideas that fell outside the liberal spectrum.