Trends in Modernist Poetry

Williams, Stevens, Eliot  EN272  L. M. Freer  Spring 2012

Imagism
Historical Details
 

Poetic Principles


Also referred to as Imagisme (Fr.) Originates 1912 as a consciously developed poetry movement within the broader Modernist consciousness Aim is absolute clarity: poetry was meant to be akin to sculpture Covers early poetry of Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, H.D., Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and others Many of its originators break with the movement and go on to practice other (sometimes related) poetic styles

To use common language, but also the exact/precise word Free verse > conventional meter Any subject may be chosen for the poem To present an image. We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. Hard and clear poetry distilled to its essence

 

William Carlos Williams

  

1883-1963 Key practitioner of Imagist principles Well-known as both poet and doctor; pediatrician in his hometown of Rutherford, N.J. But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents. Williams reads The Red Wheelbarrow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaBpMVo5iog

Wallace Stevens
 

1879-1955 Spent most of his adult life working at an insurance company Was first published at age 35 Saw poetry as a continual dialogue of question-andanswer between reality and imagination Opening Question: how many winter-related words are in The Snow Man, and what is the cumulative effect of those words?

 

The Snow Man (1921)



A poem expressing a philosophy similar to that of Imagism or of Tradition and the Individual Talent Rejects the idea that nature is personifiable or linked to human emotion: the creative consciousness must discipline itself to a condition of wintriness in order to apprehend without embellishment. Pat Righelato The poem is a single sentence describing how to see things as they are.

Later stanzas act upon/change the meaning of earlier oneswe dont get a complete thought until the end. Final stanza: we must become so numb that we can see ourselves accurately as nothingonly then can we see clearly, free of the desire for metaphor. The nothing that is = the Modernist crisis of meaning.

Thomas Stearns Eliot

 

1888-1965 Expatriate: born in the U.S., spends most of his adult life in Europe/the U.K. Becomes a British citizen in 1927. Major figure of Modernist aesthetics and writer of poems, prose, and plays Convert to Anglican (Episcopal) church in late 1920s; he often wrote about religion in his later life The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2khDhfwsoE