Rise of Modernism

This week's reading focuses on poetry written by modernists. This poetry is different from other things we have read in a few key ways. It often takes the form of free verse, meaning it lacks both rhyme and meter. It also presents discreet images using very few lines, so that readers may offer several interpretations. Many of the poems seem fragmented--they join many images which are often random into a sort of literary collage. Finally, some of them are self-conscious, such as Langston Hughes's "Theme for English B" and Marianne Moore's "Poetry."

William Carlos Williams's "The Young Housewife" is an example of few lines from which many questions and interpretations arise. The speaker compares a woman to a fallen leaf and then drives over dried leaves with his car. It is unclear whether Williams means to say that the woman is frail and that the man has power over her, or if his smile and bow reveal that he has no harmful intentions.

T. S. Eliot gives an example of fragmentation in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." He speaks of "cheap hotels," "sawdust restaurants," "yellow smoke," and before we know it women are talking about Michelangelo. We do not know for sure why the smoke is yellow or who the women are. Mysteriously he speaks of being "pinned and wriggling" on a wall and then he throws an allusion to Shakespeare into the mix. Eliot does not spend much time developing any given image before he moves on to the next and the connection between them, if any exists, is not evident.

"Anecdote of the Jar" by Wallace Stevens seems to elevate art through the image of a jar. It sits upon a hill around which the widerness gathers, "no longer wild." Creations of nature and one of mankind are juxtaposed here and it is nature which devotes its attention to the jar. It is uncertain whether nature is in awe of the work of man or if nature views it with uncertainty and as an imposter. However, there is no implication that nature wishes the jar to disappear.

In short, modernist poetry is unique in the way it strings together unrelated images without explaining their significance. The result of this is that readers are left to interpret the poem in a variety of ways. They are deceptively complicated in their short length and raise many questions.