by Chris Alexion, Copyright December 28, 2006, all rights reserved. 236 views
The two forms of modernist poetry prominent in the early twentieth century could best be summed up as "high" or formal modernism and "common" modernism. The former, best exemplified by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, is distinguished by its use of rich metaphors, complex language, and sometimes abstruse allusions. Pound, for instance, in "Portrait d'une Femme," writes of "Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale or two / Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else. . . ."
Eliot's "Waste Land," perhaps the most well-known high modernist work, takes the reader through five different sections fraught with allusions and often arcane dialogue. The aesthetic viewpoint of high modernism values the richness of language, as well as its power to evoke feeling and bring attention to problems. Though modernism officially rejected the formalism of Victorian poetry, it's possible that the high modernists became the new guard of a sort of modern formalism.
"Common" modernism, on the other hand, claims poets like Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. This strand of modernist poetry, like the fiction of Gertrude Stein, rejected the belief that only certain matter was a "fit" subject of literature. These modernists welcomed the everyday both in terms of subject matter and the language used to describe their subjects. Frost, close to nature, sings of birches, snowy rural scenes, and yellow woods. Williams chooses mundane, almost silly, subjects, such as the necessity of an ordinary red wheelbarrow or an apology over eating plums which another had left in the icebox: "Forgive me / they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold." Both Frost and Williams speak conversationally to the reader.
Both of these strands of modernist literature were deeply affected by the social forces of the early twentieth century. The stock market crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression, brought early modernism's bubbly optimism quickly back to earth. The shock conveyed to art and literature a heightened awareness of the problems of contemporary America. Authors began to wonder whether things were really improving–whether World War I would really be "the war to end all wars." Eliot reflects the turbid uncertainty of the space between the wars when he turns the seasons upside-down in "The Waste Land": "April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land . . . ." Three years later, in "The Hollow Men," Eliot described people as "stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw" and insisted, "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."
Racial tension also had a strong impact on modernist poetry. Race riots and lynchings, which occurred in American hometowns and backyards, unearthed conflicts not prominent since the War Between the States. During this time, Langston Hughes was a powerful voice of black America. Hughes used poetry to cry out against inequality, declaring in 1932,
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes. . . .
Tomorrow,
I'll sit at the table. . . .
1 • LHR • December 31, 2006 • 5:05 PM
Interesting and well written.
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