Talk:Modernist poetry in English
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[edit] featured???
How can this article be featured? It has no criticism section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.44 (talk) 18:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] References?
I noticed this article has a template stating it is lacking references, and that it's also a featured article. Aren't those two things mutually exclusive? --Impaciente 19:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] He'p me! I dislocated my 'I'
- the dislocation of the 'I' of the poet.
I've got a vague inkling of what this means to express. But I tend to think it could be stated more clearer or concretely; and if it can't I wonder if it should remain. -- Smerdis of Tlön 23:43, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
One of the central meanings of Modernism in poetry: cannot be removed. Filiocht 11:34, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Harrumph
My own fault for not responding to the call sooner, but there is a ton I really would like to add. It's just that I need to research like mad. Ok, Paul Valery saying "We must take eloquence by the throat and wring its neck." Someone (got to find out who) saying, "No beautiful poems can be written until the age allows beauty."
Then Futurism and the proto-fascist (literally proto-fascist, not proto-Nazi) movements that celebrate the machine and the New World Order of the New Man who will be without sentiment and love the beauty of machines.
Then Dadaism, Cubism, and Surrealism -- each responding to a different stimulus, but two of them responding to Freud and the idea that we may not be who we think we are, that the "I" of a poem may not be the determinant, that we may all be dreaming or controlled by the savage within, while Cubism develops into a celebration of the mechanical.
The biggest gap is Symbolism. Arthur Symmonds, junky dolt that he was, ended up being responsible for a ton of poetry, thanks to Pound and TSE. The Symbolist folk are also interested in the subconscious in various complicated ways. The biggest thing being that the Old Order had let everyone down. WW1 was a huge thing. Not only did 1/3rd of the young men of Europe die, but the nations at war were the most "civilized" and educated, so education and civilization did not lead one, as Hegel had promised, to a world of harmonious peace and art. If all the old institutions were lies, then the art that had been "civilizing" people was not right. Some fled to the orderliness of Marxism, some to fascism, some to private spiritualism.
I'm rambling, but this (rambling, having a ton of stuff in the bag but no way to pull it out in order) is why I didn't jump in to help earlier. Geogre 16:21, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Giving them too much credit
- Modernist poetry is a mode of writing characterised by technical innovation in the versification (sometimes referred to as free verse) and by the dislocation of the 'I' of the poet as a means of subverting the notion of an unproblematic poetic 'self
Except that the technical innovation was Walt Whitman's, and the conscious subversion of the poet's ego was Browning's innovation (as he painstakingly explains in his Essay on Shelley, where he distinguishes between the subjective poet and the objective poet). (Pound even admitted that Browning was his model.) Yeats, who had taken note of Browning's relationship to Shelley, also worked out several theories on the problematic nature of the poet's self (most notably, the doctrine of the Mask) before the end of the 19th century. I think this article makes the usual error of crediting the Modernists with inventing things were in truth adopted from Victorian-era poets. It also goes to far in taking the modernists at their word when they said they were breaking sharply with the Victorians. 68.118.61.219 00:52, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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- It's fair, though, to talk of Modernism as a set of traits, rather than a group of people, and to say that, in fact, Browning had many Modernist developments, as did Whitman. On the other hand, the Modernists absolutely pushed these innovations from occasional and theoretical observations to a thorough habit. It was theirs to create New Criticism (which is as much a comment on their poetry as on how one should read poetry). Every movement flows from one to another. The Romantics didn't do anything that hadn't been done in the 20 years prior to them, after all, but declaring oneself new does, in a way, make one new, as there was a coherence to those folks we call "Romantics" that wasn't present before, and there is a coherence to the "Modern poets" that wasn't there before. (Personally, I think the decision to drop a belief in progress is one of the defining characteristics, along with a general abandonment of the pastoral, as well as a newfound hatred of heroism (and consequently the epic).) Geogre 17:24, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Modernism template
I've added a template feel free to add new articles to it. Stirling Newberry 00:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Objectivism
The snippet on the objectivists is pretty inaccurate. The term for the school was actually coined by Zukofsky for the introduction to the special issue of Poetry (I believe Harriet Monroe asked him to edit an issue of "new poetry"), and he included a bunch of people not normally associated with the name (Pound, Williams, Rexroth, etc.). The Objectivist Press is really the only instance of a working relationship, and that didn't include Rakosi, Niedecker or Bunting. Oddly enough, Zukofsky own introduction to the special issue would indicate that only Reznikoff's poetry consistently met all of the criteria for "Objectivism."
Anyway, I'll try to spend some time on this, but I wanted to start here in case anyone wants to help. L Glidewell 22:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
