Writing in 1950, John Ciardi could say in the foreword to his anthology of fifteen “mid-century” American poets that barbaric yawps à la Whitman, as well as daredevil experimentation, were through; since the war, especially, the “redskin” poet (to say it with Philip Rahv) had definitely had to make room for the “paleface” and this shift in literary taste found broad confirmation in the social fact that now American poets flocked to the sheltering universities. They were finally respectable! Hence the academic tone of much verse published since the war. Sophistication, irony, priggish detachment werede rigueurfor every young...