Patricia NelsonPatricia 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 focusd 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. Read More Read Less