The Contemporary period emerged out of World War II, the financial boom following the war inspiring an optimism lacking in the Modernist movement. The poetry written in the Contemporary period spans a time of rapid social change, the transformation of societal norms reflected in the evolving poetic forms and attitudes of love. The social movements within this period challenged previous ideas of love, forcing a change in legal rights and mainstream attitudes. One such change is the ruling of Loving v. Virginia in which the Supreme Court “struck down state laws banning marriage between individuals of different races, holding that these anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment,” de-stigmatizing interracial love (Loving v Virginia).
Other movements challenged other aspects of love, through the fights for Civil Rights, feminism, Anti-War, Free Love, Queer Rights, and other radical political positions. These movement led to a “radical and long‐term shift occurring in how love and marriage were culturally perceived and performed… the ensuing socio‐cultural upheaval encouraged questioning of the cultural assumptions reinforcing female subordination and the double‐standards toward sexuality and marriage” (Wherry). In embracing these social changes, the stylistic forms of poetry also took on less conventional means of free-verse poetry and non-linear narratives, often emphasizing aesthetic as equally important to content. Borzutzky emphasizes the aesthetic of non-linear structure to address the complications of modern love in all its forms. In contrast, Tsui builds on the incomplete nature of modern love through her continuing struggle for acceptance from her Chinese mother.
Give All To Love 