ModernistPoetry

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Modernism

Timeframe

Industrial revolution (~mid 1800s) $\to$ Romantics and Victorian Era

Transcendentalism

American Civil War (1860s) $\to$ Realism/Naturalism

Existentialism

Modern Period (1900s - 1960s) $\to$ Modernism (WWI, the Great Depression, WWII)

Why it arose

• Industrialisation transformed the West
• The decimation of World War I, which wiped out a generation of young men in Europe
• Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Einstein changed people’s understanding of history, economics, philosophy, science, psychology, physics, and even religion
• Move away from European influence into the “American century”

Industrialisation

• Inventions which changed our perception of space and time
  • Railway
  • Photography
  • Telegraph
• Complicated our ability to forge a coherent perspective on reality
• Reality obfuscated, experience mediated by machines, images, artificiality

Urbanisation

• Population growth 1800 to 1900:
  • London 960000 to 6.5 million
  • NY 60000 to 3.4 million
  • Paris 547000 to 4 million
  • Boston 28000 to 561000
• Squalor and poverty made visible
• Anonymity and impersonality of modern life; fragmentation and social alienation
• Birth of the metropolis: vast, capitalist epicentres in which people are strangers to each other

Mass Media; Democratisation of information

• Proliferation of competing voices and perspectives; newspapers, tabloids, phonograph records
• Commercially driven, consumer oriented texts that bear no connection to tradition (e.g. folklore), disregarding the established power and status of ‘high art’

Secularisation

• Decline of religion
• Crisis of belief; lack of sense of purpose or metaphysical meaning, leading to a sense of futility and spiritual alienation, particularly after WWI

Freud and the mind

• Personal identity comprises a three-way struggle between subconscious desire, social and personal values/beliefs
• Identity no longer fixed but fluid, destabilised
• “The self” is difficult to know and understand
• Humans as inherently complex and, to some extent, chaotic

What it’s about

Ezra Pound’s maxim of “make it new” has come to represent the movement’s goals, and is probably ‘nicer’ than WIlliam Carlos Williams’ assertion that “Nothing is good save the new”. Ultimately, they wanted to:

• Break with the past
• Reject literary traditions
• Reject aesthetic values of their predecessors
• Reject diction that seemed ill-fitting in an era of technological breakthroughs and global violence
• Break with romantic notion of the sublime
• Become self-consciously sceptical of language and its claims on coherence

Traits

• Stylistic experimentation and disrupted syntax
• Stream of Consciousness
• Theme of alienation: characters or speakers feel disconnected from people and/or society/the world
• Focus on images
• Use of collage and disjunction
• Free verse
• An unsentimental impersonality
• References to both high and low culture

Common Threads

Regardless, modernism is relatively united in acknowledging that:

• Modernity comes with a crisis of identity; everything is in flux, so who are we and where do we stand in this world? At times this is alienating, at other times exciting
• Crisis of representation: a new understanding that art (or anything) cannot actually ‘represent’ the world accurately and objectively. It can represent what the individual sees/thinks, which is entirely subjective
• The modern world is messy and filled with unknowns. While not necessarily a bad thing, it cannot be romanticised or dressed up to look pretty! (At least, not in the conventional sense)
• Art has to do something if it is going to represent the modern experience properly

Key Poets

• On the Lit Set-Text List
  • T.S. Eliot (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)
  • e.e. cummings (“next to of course god america i”)
  • Robert Frost (“Out, Out-”)
• Regrettably not on the list
  • William Carlos Williams
  • Marianne Moore
  • Ezra Pound
  • Mina Loy
  • HD

Modernists???

The following poets on the Lit set text list are modernist-adjacent, by which I mean they share characteristics with modernists but don’t always get labelled as such

• Phillip Larkin
• Kenneth Slessor
• Rosemary Dobson
• Pablo Neruda
• Judith Wright
• Zbeigniew Herbert
• Elizabeth Bishop
• David Campbell
• Dorothy Hewett
• Stevie Smith
• W.B. Yeats
• Francis Webb

Some Related Movements

The following are often considered subsets of modernism

• Imagism
• Symbolism
• Futurism
• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Avant-Garde
• Dadaism
• Expressionism
• The Harlem Renaissance

god america i

• by e.e. cummings
• Visually, the poem is clearly a sonnet of sorts
• 14 lines, distinct rhyme, volta
• Experimentation is part of the modernist movement
• Opens with punctuation marks (inverted commas) which also close out the first stanza. These aren’t in all reproductions but the final line indicates that the first stanza is spoken and, in the final line, the objective onlooker notes his actions
• The lack of punctuation creates a rushed atmosphere as there are no pauses between clauses
• “and so forth” is blasé tonally and suggests a lack of conviction despite the patriotic stance of the words
  • Incredibly dismissive
• God, America and I all appear in lowercase, diminishing the significance of religion, patriotism, and the speaker themselves
• I recognise “oh say can you see” and “my country ‘tis” but this second song is apparently also referenced in “land of the pilgrims”. The fact that these patriotic verses are incomplete reveals the speakers non-committal attitude towards patriotic discourse
• The poem essentially reads “my country ‘tis…no more” which is, more or less, the theme
• “what of it” sounds abrupt and confrontational, but could also been read as a Que Sera, Sear (YOLO) type page
• Is it meant to read “we should worry in every language” or “in every language…thy sons acclaim your glorious name”? These have different connotations to me. Shoule everyone be concerned regardless of ethnicity or disability? Or is America celebrated universaily
• ^ are the speaker and reader separated by contrasting ideologies and thus both of the above be true?
• deafanddumb branched together feels reductive…
• “by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum” are simplified expletives/swear words
  • potentially attached to America’s religious origins
  • Maybe about politicians having to censor themselves to appear polite
• Gorry is interesting because it isn’t a real word. Is it meant to resemble ‘gory’ or is it simply ‘golly’ with an accent or impediment?
• Jingo = jingoism = extreme patriotism
• “beauty” and “beaut-/iful” hint at a volta of sorts. There isa change of topic here and a potential change of tone
• “heroic happy dead” reminds me of “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori” from Wilfred Owen’s poem, translation to “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.” The quote originally came from Horace.
• The simile of “rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter” is such a cleaver line to me; the rewording of an idiom(lambs to the slaughter), the association of roaring with the slaughter instead of the lions. Lions are also typically associated with bravery and strength
• The speaker seems to praise the soldiers who “did not stop to think” and valorises their death but the notion appears absurd, especially with how the patriotic voice has been undercut throughout the sonnet
• The final line of the first stanza links to America’s infatuation with freedom of speech
• If much (if not at all) of the first stanza enjambs to create a hurried, insecure voice, the final line allows the reader to pause. The line break and the elongated space between ‘spoke’ and ‘And’ allow for introspection and reflection
• “He spoke.” is punctuated! The tone is matter-of-fact and suggests a reliability or sensibility when compared to the speaker of the first stanza who is then described to have “drank rapidly” as a further indication of their anxiety
• The lack of final punctuation suggests the speaker or the speaker’s attitudes live on beyond the poem
• Reading…?
• The poem can be read as satirical in tone, denouncing America’s blind nationalism
• IT can also be read as an anti-war poem, critical of the sacrifices soldiers make for their country

Out, Out-

• By Robert Frost
• Title and form
  • This title is likely to be an allusion to the latter but both quotes could be drawn into analysis
    • Lady Macbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say!
    • Macbeth: Out, out, brief candle!
  • Narrative poem
  • Single stanza
  • Minimal rhyme
  • Uneen Meter
  • Blank verse
• The first 2 sentences/6 lines
  • The poem opens with a zoomorphic description of the buzz saw, making it seem aggressive and dangerous
  • The buzz saw is also connected to the somewhat harsh “d” sound in the alliteration in the following line
  • Juxtaposing this is the sibilance associated with the wood itself and the serenity of the natural landscape
  • Sunset is a foreboding symbol
• The following 3 sentences/6 lines
  • The zoomorphic phrase from earlier is repeated, appearing twice in line 7
  • The foreshadowing of “And nothing happened” and the speaker’s plea to “Call it a day”.
  • The tonal changes between lyrical and jolting, and the suggested nuances of understanding in “As it ran light, or had to bear a load” work to create tension and apprehension in the reader
• The next 4 sentences/6 lines
  • Gender roles are represented through the association of working the saw (masculine) and aprons and supper (feminine)
  • Childhood in rural areas is described to be not playful but characterised by working/contributing to the household
  • Structurally, the poem changes here, reflecting the tonal shift. Caesura replaces enjambment
  • The saw is again described to be alive and cognisant of its actions
• The next 4 sentences/8 lines
  • The short sentence of “But the hand!” is followed by a long flowing sentence that reads over 3 and a half lines. The following lines all have longer pauses, as the structure of the text reflects the emotions of the boy and the atmosphere of the yard
  • The repetition of “boy” works to reinforce the pity felt as he is young and innocent yet “Doing a man’s work” and suffering the consequences
  • The boy is in such shock that he doesn’t acknowledge the hand is already gone
• The final 8 lines/10 sentences
  • Again, lines feature caesura more than the enjambment of earlier. The abruptness suits the tone of the content
  • The doctor appears to anaesthetise the boy and administer CPR
  • The allusion of the title is possibly referenced in the line “puffed his lips out with his breath”
    • Like blowing a candle out
  • The “child at heart” has suffered heart failure from the shock of the accident or has simply bled out
  • The ending seems shocking, devoid of emotion. It suggests life goes on despite the tragedies faced by the living
• Readings?
  • The poem can be read as a criticism of industrialisation
  • The poem can also be interpreted as a commentary on the inevitability of death and the notion that our lives are inherently devoid of meaning
  • ^ These readings definitely fit the modernist vibe