In the Language of Lost Light

Patricia Nelson is a retired attorney and environmentalist. She has worked with the "Activist" group of poets in California for many years. The Activist credo is that every word in a poem should be poetically "active," employing some kind of highly focused poetic technique-a principle not as self-evident as it might sound. The group, which formed in the 1930s around Lawrence Hart, might also be described as neo-Modernists. The first generation of poets taught by Hart rose to prominence in the 1940s and 50s and the group subsequently fell out of fashion. The "Activists" are now experiencing a resurgence of publication by a different generation of poets. Among the group's signature techniques are clusters of intense metaphoric imagery and a preference for associational, rather than narrative organization.