5.3. Modernist Poetry

Example authors especially known for their innovations:

• Gertrude Stein 1874-1946 “mother of modernism”

  • central figure in modernism

  • international, supported/loved art/artists

  • focus on subjective expression, focus on individual words

  • deconstructs words and traditions

  • creating new → taking possession

• T.S. Eliot 1888-1965 “impersonal poetry” & “ objective correlative

  • escape from emotion and personality, attempt to avoid it

  • external facts evoce emotions, avoiding descriptions of emotions

• Ezra Pound 1885-1972 “to make it new”

  • Problematic: totalitarian, fascist views, censorship

  • Phrase “Make it new”

  • emphasis on intertextuality, rejection of tradition

  • direct treatment

  • precision, clarity and sincerity

  • intercultural puzzles

  • economy of words (only use necessary words)

  • musical phrases → natural rhythm

  • free verse

  • freedom of choice for topics

  • Anti-convenionalism

Ezra Pound and Imagism

• Imagist movement by Pound

• Image presents intellectual/emotional complex in instant of time

• associative process

• focus on portraying one single image → one quick moment

• epiphany

• e.g. Amy Lowell, Hilda Dolittle, …

Imagist poem “In a sation of the Metro” 1913 → 2 different images create 1 new insight, quick revelation, direct treatment, economy of words, normal rhythm, everyday language, …

Examples: Project of an American modernism:

• Marianne Moore 1887-1972

• Wallace Stevens 1879-1955

• E.E. Cummings 1894-1962

• William Carlos Williams 1883-1963

• Robert Frost 1874-1963

  • focus on local colour, New England, less experimental

    → exception

Typical features of Frost's poems

• experience of rural (and urban), nature

• focus on local color

• homemade style/world

• Concrete images, the everyday, direct treatment

• simple language (but traditional form)

• contains narratives

  → realistic, neo-romantic, “classical” <-> modern

  → he is inbetween