Modern, Post-Modern, & Contemporary Poetry

1. Modern, Post-Modern,&Contemporary Poetry

2. Modern Poetry (1900-1950) • Follows basic characteristics of Modernism • Rejection of traditional form and content • Generally speaking, Modern poetry offers • Social critique • Introspection • Experimental form • Untraditional sources for inspiration • Free verse

3. Edwin Arlington Robinson • Content was bold and experimental • Characters who experience personal defeats and have generally a pessimistic outlook on life • Known for his wise and ironic views of human behavior (this is what makes him fit the modern period) • Strove for realism in his poetry • Narrative Poetry • Poetry that tells a story and has elements of plot, setting, and character • Speaker: the voice that tells the story

4. Edgar Lee Masters • Product of the Midwest—found small town life oppressive • Became a lawyer in Chicago and began writing poems, plays, and essays • In 1914, a friend gave him a copy of Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • Collection of epigraphs—a short poem, usually engraved on a gravestone, which sums up an individual’s life

5. Edgar Lee Masters • Decided to write a book of epigraphs that would reveal the dark underside of small town life • Gossip/Rumors --Affairs --Abortions • Addictions --Rape --Murder • Published Spoon River Anthology in 1915 • Created fictional town of Spoon River, IL • Rejected traditional forms—all poems are in free verse • Over 250 epigraphs create the town through the dead • Epigraphs are written in the voice of the dead, and an entire life is usually revealed through one incident that is remembered even in death

6. Dramatic Monologue/Epitaphs • Audience is implied • No dialogue • Poet speaks through the voice of a fictional character (persona)

7. Robert Frost—tradition in a Modernist world • Characteristics of Frost’s Poetry • Popular with critics and public • Devoted to traditional forms • Used conversational language • Focused on American landscapes, specifically New England • Known for “cranky realism” • Influenced heavily by Emerson and “Self Reliance”

8. Robert Frost • “Birches” and “Mending Wall” • Style: Blank Verse • Unrhymed iambic pentameter • Sounds like conversational English • Relies on other sound effects than rhyme to create poetic elements • Alliteration • Onomatopoeia • Auditory imagery • Assonance • Consonance • Parallelism/anaphora • Poem categorized as a pastoral: a poem that deals with a rural setting

9. Imagism • Reject the Romantics’ focus on nature as a source of solace • Movement begins in France in 1875…American writers are first introduced to French Symbolist poets during expatriate movement after WWI • Symbolism: a form of expression in which the world of appearances is violently rearranged in order to depict a different and more truthful version of reality • This violent rearrangement was visually apparent in the work of Picasso; e.e. cummings attempts to do in poetry what Picasso was doing in painting

10. Imagism • Started by Ezra Pound and TS Eliot • Also heavily influenced by Japanese haiku • Imagism: believed poetry could be made purer by concentrating on the precise, clear, unqualified image • imagery alone can carry a poem’s message • Sought to rid poetry of its prettiness, sentimentality, and artificiality • Famous imagists: Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Archibald MacLeish

11. William Carlos Williams • Imagist—known for short, lyric poems which focused on a single image • Poems were short because Williams was a doctor—wrote many poems on prescription pads.

12. The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens.

13. “This is Just to Say” I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

14. The Great Figure Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.

15. Futurism and Concrete Poetry • Poetry that considers not just the meaning of the words, but the meaning conveyed through typography (how the poem looks in print) • Created poems that were both textual and visual • Poems take specific shapes that can only be seen in print

16. e.e. cummings • Challenged the conventions of syntax (the rules for the formation of sentences) • Made typography (the general character or appearance of printed matter) and the division of words part of the shape and meaning of the poem • Heavily influenced by French symbolism and Whitman’s free verse

17. e. e. cummings • Characteristics of cummings poetry • Jubilant lyricism • Celebration of love • Beauty of nature • Affirmation of the individual

18. “in Just-”cummings never titled his poems…sorta like Emily Dickinson  when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisabel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it’s spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it’s spring

19. “the hills” the hills like poets put on purple thought against the magnificent clamor of day tortured in gold, which presently crumpled collapses exhaling a red soul into the dark so duneyed master enter the sweet gates of my heart and take the rose which perfect is With killing hands

20. the sky was can dy lu mi nous ed I ble spry pinks shy lem ons greens cool choco lates un der a lo co mo tive s pout ing vi o lets

21. l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness

22. r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r who a(s w(e loo)k upnowgath PPEGORHRASS eringint(o- aThe):l eA !p: S a (r rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs) to rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly ,grasshopper;

23. Post Modern Poetry • 1950-1990 • Reaction against the ordered, rational view of the world • Reaction against stifling conformity of post WWII America • Emphasized the absurd

24. Confessional Poetry • Personal to individual poet’s life and experiences • Subjects previously not discussed openly • Private experiences with feelings about • DEATH • TRAUMA • DEPRESSION • RELATIONSHIPS • Poetry explored the psychological aspects of these types of events on the psyche • CONFESSIONAL POETS: SYLVIA PLATH, ANNE SEXTON, ROBERT LOWELL

25. “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath • Personifies the mirror • In what ways does the mirror describe itself? • Silver, exact • Not cruel, only truthful • The eye of a little god • What does the mirror spend most of its time doing? • Mediating on the opposite wall • When the woman appears in the second stanza, how does she react to the mirror? Why?

26. Beat Poets • Sub-genre of Post Modern Movement • 1940s-1950s—NYC and San Francisco • Questioned mainstream politics and culture • Rejected conformity and tradition • BOTH SOCIAL CONFORMITY AND TRADITION AS WELL AS LITERARY • Goals of the Beat Poets • Changing consciousness through • Use of hallucinogens • Mediation/Eastern Philosophy • Defy conventional writing • Beat Poets: Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

27. “Homework” by Allen Ginsberg If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle, I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,    Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,    Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again, Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow, Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie    Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange, Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state, & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean.