In discussions of American poetry since World War II the work of John Berryman has become increasingly neglected and marginalized. Critics have overwhelmingly chosen to favour the notion that he is an academic establishment poet whose career can comfortably be described as a move from New Critical traditionalism towards selfabsorbed confessionalism. This study shows how such a narrow understanding of Berrymans work is reflective of a broader critical inclination towards a codification of the literary canon as a duel between competing factions of a formalist establishment mainstream and an experimentalist countercultural avantgarde. By examining the extent to which Berrymans poetry engages with the complex religiopolitical climate of Cold War American culture this study exposes the inadequacy of the paradigm of mainstream traditionalism in relation to his work. In doing so it opens up threads of comparative possibility between his work and that of poets ordinarily segregated from him by divisive conceptions of the literary canon. As such this volume provides a reconsideration of Berrymans work that simultaneously asks broader questions about the nature of the American poetic canon and established definitions of postmodern poetry.