Introduction

In the post-war period is not hard to find historical causes for dissociated sensibility in the United States. World War II itself, the rise of anonymity and consumerism in a mass urban society, the protest movements of the 1960s, the Vietnam conflict, the Cold War, environmental threats are only some of the events that brought on great changes in society. However, the development of the mass media (radio, movies and television) and mass culture transformed American society the most. This also had great impact on American poetry of the time, since new relatively cheap methods of printing encouraged the establishment of numerous literary magazines. But at the same time Americans also became aware of the potential dangers that technology might bring. By means of poetry one could express subjective life and articulate the influence of technology and mass society on the individual.