poetry and modernist
poetry and modernist
The questioning of the self and the exploration of technical innovations in modernist poetry are
intimately interconnected. The dislocation of the authorial presence is achieved through the application of such techniques as collage, found poetry, visual poetry, the juxtaposition of apparently unconnected materials, and combinations of these. These techniques are used not for their own sake but to open up questions in the mind of the reader regarding the nature of the poetic experience. These developments parallel changes in the other arts, especially painting and music, that were taking place concurrently.
Additionally, Modernist poetry disavowed the traditional aesthetic claims of Romantic poetry's later phase and no longer sought "beauty" as the highest achievement of verse. With this abandonment of the sublime came a turn away from pastoral poetry and an attempt to focus poetry on urban, mechanical, and industrial settings. The new heroes would not be swains laboring in the fields, but office workers struggling across London Bridge, and the new settings would not be "romantic chasms deep and wide," but vacant lots, smoked over cities, and subways.
Another important feature of much modernist poetry in English is a clear focus on the surface of the poem. Much of this work focuses on the literal meaning of the words on the page rather than any metaphorical or symbolic meanings that might be imputed to them. This approach to writing is reflected in Ezra Pound's advice to young writers (in his 1937 book The ABC of Reading) to 'buy a dictionary and learn the meanings of words' and T.S. Eliot's response when asked the meaning of the line 'Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree in the cool of the day...' from Ash Wednesday (1927); he said "It means 'Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree in the cool of the day...'". Also pertinent is William Carlos Williams' 1944 statement that 'A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words'.