Even this attempt to tease out these qualifiers, to find someone exemplary of these abstractions, I risk the pitfalls of greatness, but when I think of 20th Century and American, I think of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Greatness is, to me, the least interesting qualifier of the question. I want to know what we mean when we say 20th Century and American. Is claiming Frost or Stevens or Moore the best way to exemplify such things? And by such things I’m thinking some of the great debates around 20th century American poetics—free verse, open field, locality, the politicization of form, Black Arts Movement, &c—and, for that matter, America—the vote, years and years of global warfare, urbanization, factory farming, Civil Rights Movements, separatist movements, jazz, &c. Even this attempt to tease out these qualifiers, to find someone exemplary of these abstractions, I risk the pitfalls of greatness, but when I think of 20th Century and American, I think of Gwendolyn Brooks.