When Did the Modern Writing & Poetry Era Begin?

After World War II.

A clear line exist between writers and poets who established their reputations before World War II and those that came after. I don’t read many of the latter.

Modern writers I do like are Ginsberg, Kerouac, Dylan, Joan Didion, Hunter Thompson, Bruce Chatwin, and Paul Theroux.

Notable among them is a freer and often experimental style that pre-War writers lacked. (Joyce was certainly the exception.)

The old masters stayed within fixed prose styles so it was good that a rain soaked wind touched a landscape increasingly dry.

Still, I don’t read many post-war writers. They lack the power and sometimes majesty of Conrad, Tolstoy or Melville. The era of great writing may have passed, as did the era of classical music.

We still have good writing but how much approaches art?

Can anyone pen this today?

“Towards thee I roll, all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”