Countercultural Verses: A Postmodern Reading of Hippie-Era Poetry in 1960s America

This paper presents a segment of the M.A. thesis titled Countercultural Narratives: A Postmodern Study of American Poetry in the 1960s. It examines the rise of postmodernism and its manifestation in the poetry of the 1960s. How did postmodern traits reflect the social and spiritual changes of the time? What were the conditions that pushed writers to experiment with literature by using innovative methods of expressions, such as deconstruction, intertextuality, and little narratives? To address these questions, this study will analyze Robert Duncan’s Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow (1960), Philip Whalen’s Metaphysical Insomnia Jazz (1960), and James Dickey’s The Sheep Child (1966). The paper focuses on the main postmodern concepts, such as Derrida’s deconstruction, Lyotard’s little narratives, and Kristeva’s intertextuality. These techniques, along with the unconventional subject matters, will be studied in relation to the decade’s major countercultural movement, the Hippie Movement, and its ideals. By filling this gap in existing research, this study aims to contribute to theory of postmodernism.