Anglo-American modernism

The Modern is the term denoting the whole period, modernity (1909-1939) are social, political, technological changes and modernism is an artistic response to these changes. Americans still clang to the 19th century values but rapid changes destroyed old values. It was the era of rising feminism since women got used to working (the only positive effect of WW1), huge immigration, jazz music (although only avant-garde listened to it, for normal Americans it was a primitive African form), economic growth and the biggest depression, decreasing role of religion, race riots and mass popular culture. At first, Modernism was not appreciated in American but in 1950s Americans finally realised that America is home of modern art and it suddenly became appreciated, rediscovering early modernists like Poe, Melville and Dickinson.

The Modernism used technique of fragmentation, alienation and defamiliarization to make things look different and force readers to look differently on common objects. They were innovative, experimental art, breaking from traditional Victorian forms. They were influenced by realism in using colloquial language and especially psychological realism of Henry James, an early modernist. They wanted to catch the speed as feeling of changes of 20^th century by cuts and flashbacks (narrative is not chronological) and film technique of the camera-eye (watching though camera with no emotions involved).

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (1912, Chicago) was publishing new innovative writers of that time, American and the British ones. It still exists under a simpler name Poetry, published by the Poetry Foundation and it is the leading monthly poetic journal.

Most American authors still felt culturally inferior to Europe and they basically had two choices: 1. Go to Europe and wrote in European tradition => Anglo-American Modernism. 2. Stay in American and create new American culture => American Modernists. Anglo-American Modernism includes American poets who moved to London and were using more regular forms.

IMAGISM was a movement established by Pond that believed poems should be based on presentation of images = intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, based on a concrete picture of reality, never abstract. The meaning is never stated openly, just presented.

Main principles:

1. Direct treatment of poetic object, no symbols or allegories.

2. Using no word that is not absolutely necessary or which does not contribute to the meaning (result of Japanese haiku).

3. The rhythm should be derived from music and spontaneous.

4. Complete freedom of subject matter.

5. Common speech used.

EZRA POUND (1885-1972)

Pound is now considered to be the greatest poet of the 20th century but he was rather infamous during his lifetime. Even though he was publishing early modernist poets and helping many young authors to promote their work, he supported Mussolini and for that he was accused of fascism and put into asylum. In reality, he just believed that politics should be conducted by professionals and opposed the idea of democracy in which masses decide the political representation. He saw in Mussolini an enlightened leader that would bring peace, he certainly did not support Hitler's conquest of Europe. He died in a secluded place in Italy but he still managed to start the most influential poetic movement of the century.

Pound was trying to re-define poetry for the new century and almost all modernist poets were influenced by him. He defined the main principles of Imagism and became a figure of avant-garde. His long poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) was the first one written in Imagist style, summarising his years in London. He was also a famous literary  critic, his collected essays in The ABC of Reading set an approach to the appreciation and understanding of literature.

Pound decided to take the most important parts of world poetry like Chinese motive and Japanese Noh drama, Dante, Homer, style of French troubadours and make it new, trying to fit stories into modern situations, creating modern mythology. He was also using the method of dramatic monologue from Victorian poetry which he used in the collection Personae inspired by Latin poetry. In this work he expresses his idea that poets should not describe their own identity but rather create various poetic identities.

Later on, Pound realized that images have major problems – there are static. Therefore, he came up with different method called VORTICISM (Latin vortex = whirl) where a poem starts with one image and then enlarges like a whirl.

His most important work The Cantos is written as a poetic sequence (originally Whitman's form) and contains history of entire world. It is made of important events and works Pound found in many languages, retelling of Confucius, Bible, Divine Comedy and so on. There poems as a sequence are thematically connected and together create a meaningful whole. He kept rewriting it, adding new parts.

In a Station of the Metro was inspired by Japanese haiku, there are no redundant words, not a single verb. Imagine standing on a platform at some higher place like stairs and looking at people coming. It is a crowd so there is no have time to look at everybody’s face in that mass. People’s faces represent petals which is a nice image, there is beauty in details. Black bough (dirty, ugly) represents the crowd which hardly anybody likes. It is an analogical metaphor between petals-faces and crowd-black bough. The first line is an intellectual description of concrete objects; the second is an emotional response how the narrator feels about it. The indefinite article "A metro" suggests that it can be any metro station in the world.

A Girl is a poem of metamorphosis where you have to imagine it happens to you, the reader. It is similar to the story of Apollo and Daphne but she underwent it willingly and it did not hurt that. We don’t need to necessarily know this allusion but it is more interesting to study it and then read again. The indefinite article "a" again suggests that maturity happens to any girl. "All this is folly to the world" expresses that although the transformation into a woman is amazing, the world does not care about some growing girl, there are millions of them.

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT (T.S. ELIOT) (1888-1965)

He got Nobel Prize for his poetry, studied at Harvard and Oxford Sanskrit and oriental philosophy. He moved to Britain because he claimed that America is a country without history. He noticed that as a result of WW1, there was a decline of civilisation values and his writing excavated hopelessness, spiritual emptiness and paralysis. He focused on alienation of relationships, impossibility of meaningless communication, used fragmentation, different styles, allusions, myths and mixed various traditions.

He coined new literary term - objective correlative = doctrine Eliot insisted on a rule that as a writer you should present a situation or events in such a way that you objectify the particular emotion to evoke the particular emotion in a reader (totally different from very subjective Romantic poets). As a result, the interpretation of the poem depends on the reader which changes the face of modern poetry.

In London he become influenced by Pound and thanks to him published his first poem The Love Song of Alfred J. Pruflock that made him immediately the leading avant-garde poet in Britain. It starts with an epigraph from Dante´s Alighieri Divine Comedy that serves to cast irony on Pruflock´s intent. It reveals a state of mind in average Englishman mind, shocked by latest cultural development and devastation. The poem is a stream of consciousness in the form of dramatic monologue about regrets, embarrassment, longing, sexual frustration and decay (growing old, sense of mortality). The speaker compares the 20^th century to hell where the great artist Michelangelo becomes a common conversation topic for afternoon tea of babbling ladies. The frustrated speaker wants to say something, ask an overwhelming question (possibly about the purpose of existence) but ultimately does not. He is not able to lead a meaningful life (I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.) nor find a partner as he laments mermaids will not sing for him.

His other poem The Waste Land (1922) is still considered the most influential poem of the 20^th century, even though nowadays it is difficult to read so there is a version with footnotes. It was originally three times as long but it became heavily edited by Pound who decided that fragmented style was more appropriate to capture alienation of the modern culture. Although it is a description of modern Britain, there are numerous allusions to Greek mythology, Dante, Homer, Arthurian legends, Shakespeare = all that combines to create something new.

He was also a literary critic who in his famous essay Of Tradition and Individual Talent gives advice to beginning writers. He believed that poets should forget their personal grievances, study the literary tradition and write about universal things. He was also a playwright, trying to recover tradition of drama in verse, Murder in Cathedral is about Thomas Beckett.

Eliot was also a cat lover and mentions cats in almost every poem and even a whole collection dedicated to them, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The Naming of Cats from the cat collection is a playful poem that claims that cats have three names – an official name, a sweeter fancy name and a secret name only a cat knows. Eliot shows great admiration for cats. His other work includes a long poem Ash Wednesday and Four Quarters, a set of four poems.

  

EDWARD ESTLIN CUMMINGS (e. e. cummings) (1894-1962) was acquainted with Gertrude Stein while studying at Harvard and later with Ezra Pound who helped him to get published. He volunteered as an ambulance driven in the WW1 in France but he was accused of espionage and sent to a prison camp. In Paris he met Pablo Picasso whom he admired so he decided to use geometric art also in his poetry which resulted in extremely experimental poems with special form, punctuation, spelling and syntax. Cummings became famous for his typographical experimental poetry. Collection ViVa.

His poem Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond destroys poetic customs since its rhyme overpasses lines. It is not about a real journey but the metaphysical one. Metaphor is that he has no experience with love so he really goes somewhere he has never travelled before and gladly! This poem should not be read by lines but rather making pauses where punctuations are. The love for that woman opens him, it is like spring for him but as the rose would die in show, so would his love if rejected.

Seeker of Truth is a simple image of a seeker who follows no path since truth is right here. l(a… originally required two voices for reading, one reading the normal words, another words in a bracket.

Imagine a person sitting under a tree all alone. S/he is full of loneliness and as that emotion fills them, a single leaf falls from the tree and lands on their lap. Autumn associates with withering nature and slowly falling leaf signifies slow death. In addition, there’s just one leaf which evokes loneliness.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963) became a member of Imagist movement when Pound published in London his first collection Tempers. However, soon Williams did not agree with the program of Eliot and Pound and decided to move away from the European tradition, wanting to start a new movement based on American themes. His Objectivism put main emphasis not on images but more on common everyday objects written in colloquial language – that is why his poems sound like messages plus he avoided abstract ideas and wrote poems about apples, fridge, working class, getting drunk and so on. What makes it poetry is choice of words and emphasis.

The Red Wheelbarrow is basically a sentence in the structure of a poem. It breaks lines to see words clearly so the reader has to imagine it part by part. At first, we expect something important ("so much depends on"), then we imagine a red wheel but we find out that it is a part of a barrow so we must color the whole barrow red not just its wheel. Then we imagine drops falling on the barrow and there are chickens nearby so we add them as well. After rain the chicken will not stay clean so we have to color them again with some yard’s mud. The poem shows how our imagination works – it resizes, re-colors and adds new things to the image.

This Is Just to Say was by many scholars not considered a poem at all since it looks like just a message on the fridge but it is, in fact, a very personal poem. Williams fell in love with an intelligent girl but she did not want him so he marriage her more average sister instead. This poems is a way to apologise to her and appreciate their stable relationship.

HILDA DOOLITTLE (H.D.) travelled across Europe and in London met Ezra Pound who made her into the leader of Imagist movement after Williams left. She had also a short relationship with Pound who helped to publish her work. After she left Pound who published some poems without her consent she had an affair with Freud and his female cousin, it seems she was bisexual.

She was interested in Greek mythology and wrote a long poetic sequence Helen in Egypt , retelling the myth from the feminist perspective. The poem Helen considers the point of view of the Greek people on Helen, a daughter of Zeus and a human mother, who hate her because she is the reason for the war. Especially soldiers wish she was dead since they would not have to fight anymore.

MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972) was travelling around Europe, met Pound and became an editor of modernist magazine The Dial. in which she was publishing new, especially female, poets. Her Collected Poems gained a Pulitzer Prize.

In her poem Poetry she states her artistic beliefs. The first line is quite shocking coming from the poem who claims she dislikes poetry. However, then she admits that with “perfect contempt one discovers a place for the genuine.” Moore dislikes poetry that she calls “fiddle,” possibly written about stereotypical poetic subjects and poets who write it are only “half-poets” in her eyes. She has difficulties with defining the genuine poetry so she does it through stating what is bad poetry. The poetry must be genuine for both the poet and the reader. It cannot be “so derivative as to become unintelligible because “we do not admire what we cannot understand.” She created the imaginary garden, the poetic world in which imagination can express something real.

HART CRANE (1899-1932) was influenced by Eliot but he gradually changed to more optimistic Whitman. He wrote a long poem Bridge about Brooklyn´s symbol of America but he looks at it with American workers, Pocahontas, Rip Van Winkle and animals. He celebrated America as Whitman did. In reality Crane drank a lot, was gay and committed suicide when he was 23.

GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946) influenced Modernism just as Pound did. She studied psychology with William James, was interested how mind works and tried to put it into writing which makes her poems almost unreadable. She was from a German Jewish American family and a lesbian in addition so she represented many minorities. She spent most of life in Paris where he led avant-garde community and Hemingway was her student. She was a close friend with Pablo Picasso who even made her portrait in cubist style.

She could not get published because the publishers thought she could not use proper English. In fact, she was using syntax experiments and introducing cubism into literature which resulted in her describing characters from multiple points of view and using simple sentences that had multiple meanings. Three Lives is a collection of three stories about three immigrant women, one them is an Afro-American. It is the very first story written by a white author about a black person that is not a caricature and it is still appreciated by Afro-American critics.

Her most provocative statement is from the poem Sacred Emily: “(A) Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Some think she was making fun of readers, therefore, we are idiots for reading her, others regard her as a big poet who experimented. She wanted to show ambiguity of language as there can be many interpretations. In this poem she depicts the death of a young girl in an extremely detached way. The protagonist dies and the author is not trying to make readers sorry for her. Stein was also the first white author who described the mind process of a black girl in As Fine as Melanctha and acknowledged blacks have feelings like the rest = she begin ethnic modernism.