"Cold War Poetry considers the fifties poem as part of a dual cultural project: as proof of the competency of the newly professionalized poet and as a user-friendly way of initiating a newly educated, upwardly mobile postwar audience into high culture. Brunner revisits Richard Wilbur, Randall Jarrell, and other acknowledged leaders of the period as well as neglected writers such as Rosalie Moore, V. R. Lang, Katherine Hoskins, Melvin B. Tolson, and Hyam Plutzik. He also examines the one-sided authority of the (male-dominated) book review process, the ostracizing of female and minority poets, poetic fads such as the ubiquitous sestina, and the power of the classroom anthology to establish criteria for reading." "Decoding the politics embedded in the poetry of an ostensibly apolitical time, Edward Brunner's Cold War Poetry provides a powerful rereading of a pivotal decade."--BOOK JACKET.