From their very debut, the writers of the Romanian so-called “’80s Generation” dropped altogether the Thaw literary formula, which was based on half-truths. Instead, they developed a programmatic discourse that showed a great self-awareness of “the real reality.” Their need to reconquer the real was radically different from propagandist make-believe, and from the ideological verbiage that constituted the official discourse. This essay looks into the specific configuration of a new poetic paradigm by examining critically the challenges of its relation with the material, that is to say everyday reality (with a special focus on the Romanian youth culture in the ’80s) as one of the defining elements of the young generation’s poetry.