English 11 Modernist Poetry Packet Your Name:_________________________________________________________ Imagist Criteria (from F.S. Flint’s Imagisme) 1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome. 4. Complete freedom of subject matter 5. Free verse was encouraged along with other new rhythms 6. Common speech language was used, and the exact word was always to be used, as opposed to the almost exact word. In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Ezra Pound (1916) (1885-1972) Questions: Imagism and “In a Station of the Metro” 1. What is imagism? 2. What are the criteria of the imagist movement? 3. What is the poem describing? 4. What does the word “apparition” mean? 5. What does the word apparition mean in the context of the poem? 6. What comparison is Pound making? 7. How does Pound’s use of imagery create symbolic meaning? 8. What characteristics of the poem satisfy the various criteria of the imagist movement? 9. Using the imagist criteria, write your own two line poem. The Unknown Citizen (To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. W.H. Auden (1940) (1907-1973) Questions: “The Unknown Citizen” 1. What subjects are present in the poem? 2. Who is speaking? How do you know? 3. How is he/she is connected to the Unknown Citizen? 4. What is the tone of the speaker? How do you know? 5. What is the tone of the author? How do you know? 6. What ironic discrepancies do you find between the speaker’s attitude toward the subject and that of the poet himself? By what is the poet’s attitude made clear? 7. What does the title of the poem allude to? 8. What is the significance of this allusion in the poem? (Why does Auden make this allusion?) 9. What tendencies in our civilization does Auden satirize? 10. Read the three-line epitaph at the beginning of the poem as carefully as you read what follows. How does the epitaph help establish the voice by which the rest of the poem is spoken? Dulce et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. Wilfred Owen (1920) (1893-1918) Questions: “Dulce et Decorum Est” 1. Owen is poet who wrote the majority of his poems from a military hospital during World War I. What battlefield experiences is this poem primarily concerned with? 2. What images illustrate these experiences? (Find 3 specific quotes): a. b. c. 3. Do the words describing the images have positive or negative connotations? Pick specific words to discuss from each quote. 4. What is the author’s tone as he describes the subject(s) in the poem? 5. What does the tone reveal about the authors’ stance on the subjects of war and patriotism? 6. What might the theme of the poem be? Grass PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work. Carl Sandburg (1918) (1878-1967) Questions: “Grass” 1. Look up each of the following and explain what they are: a. Austerlitz: b. Waterloo: c. Gettysburg d. Ypres e. Verdun f. What do these places have in common? Why does Sandburg allude to these places in his poem? g. What would be different about the poem if only one were mentioned? 2. What words/phrases are repeated in the poem? 3. What is Sandburg trying to accomplish through this repetition? 4. Who is the speaker in the poem? What literary device is employed? 5. What is the “work” that the speaker does? 6. How does the speaker feel about this work? 7. What is the tone of the poem? What reveals the tone? The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds (also, with the church's protestant blessings daughters, unscented shapeless spirited) they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead, are invariably interested in so many things-at the present writing one still finds delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles? perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D .... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy e.e. cummings (1922) (1894-1962) Mirabeau Bridge Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away And lovers Must I be reminded Joy came always after pain The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I We're face to face and hand in hand While under the bridges Of embrace expire Eternal tired tidal eyes The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I Love elapses like the river Love goes by Poor life is indolent And expectation always violent The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I The days and equally the weeks elapse The past remains the past Love remains lost Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I Guillaume Apollinaire (1913) (1880-1918) Subway Rush Hour Mingled breath and smell so close mingled black and white so near no room for fear. Langston Hughes (1951) (1902-1967) To Lucasta On Going to the Wars Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breasts, and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such, As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honor more. Richard Lovelace (1649) (1618-1658) High Treason I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor is beyond my grasp. But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life for ten places in it, for certain people, seaports, pinewoods, fortresses, a run-down city, gray, grotesque, various figures from its history mountains (and three or four rivers). Jose Emilio Pacheco (1969) (b. 1939) Sindhi Woman Barefoot through the bazaar, and with the same undulant grace as the cloth blown back from her face, she glides with a stone jar high on her head and not a ripple in her tread. Watching her cross erect stones, garbage, excrement, and crumbs of glass in the Karachi slums, I, with my stoop, reflect they stand most straight who learn to walk beneath a weight. Jon Stallworthy (1963) (b. 1935) The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Wallace Stevens (1921) (1879-1955)