Chapter 10
Poetry from 1900 -- 1930s
From An Outline of American
Literature by Peter B. High
Experiment with new forms
and content

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)



use traditional sonnet and quatrain to express 20th
century fears and problems (p.125)
filled with a modern sense of loss, nothing to
replace the old values
“Richard Cory”
Richard Cory (p.126)


Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim. (p.126)
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he
walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson The Children Of The Night
Robert Frost (1873-1963)






Worked in the traditional way of poetry
“Aloneness” is a common theme in his poetry
speaks directly and use an unliterary language
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923)
a good poem “begins in delight and ends in
wisdom.”
“The Road Not Taken” (1916)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
by Robert Frost

Whose Woods Are These I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
by Robert Frost

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)



in 1902, she moved to
Paris (p.130)
became close friends with
Picasso, Braque and
Matisse
the “modernist revolt” in
art—to find a new way of
looking at the world

Alice B. Toklas & Gertrude Stein, studio
at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris. 1922
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
the idea of her art: to find a new way of
looking at the world
 show the conscious mind in writing
 made her own English language into an
entirely new language by throwing away the
rules of traditional grammar and made
words act in completely new ways.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
“Useful Knowledge” (1928) – “one and one and
one and one . . . “



each word has the same completely
independent existence
each word appears as if it is new
the word is happening to us now, coming
one after another
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
the words and meanings create something she
calls “the continuous present” (p.131)
 read her writing word by word, we are looking
at it moment-by-moment
 “rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”

crate the experience of now as confusing and
not understandable
 her language has no past and future

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) &
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)




valued a sense of history – see Eliot’s “Tradition
and the Individual Talent” (1920)—p.132
knowledge of tradition is acquired for the poet to
create new poetry – see Pound’s “Credo”
(1911)—p.132
Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922)—p.133
Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” (1920)—
p.133
Shared Beliefs



“impersonalism” as Eliot defined it, “the progress
of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual
extinction of personality”
used the language and myths of classical literature
important to look at the poetry but not at the poet –
the feeling, or emotion, resulting from the poem is
something different from the feeling or emotion in
the mind of the poet
Ezra Pound





Defined the “image” in Imagism as: “an intellectual
and emotional complex in an instant of time (p.134)
good poetry was based on images (picture of solid real
things) rather than ideas
“The apparition of those faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough” (In a Station of the
Metro, 1915)
images drawn from a real world
placing one image on top of the other so that we see
them as a single image
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) &
Amy Lowell




two other important Imagists during
the WWI
Amy Lowell—leader of the Imagist
Took the leadership of the Imagist
movement away from Pound—the
Amygists
“Patterns” (1915), p.135
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)






influenced by Ezra Pound and Imagism
used “hard, clear, cold , exact and real” images
“Silence” (p.136)
unusual subjects (animals) and study them from
strange angle
experimenting with new forms of rhythm, rhyme,
and content, short sentences mixed with long
ones
Genuine poetry shows us “imaginary gardens
with real toads in them.”
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)







a doctor-poet
influenced by Eliot’s “impersonal”
style
more interested in the language and
scenes of everyday life
“To A Poor Old Woman”
means exactly what they say
deep concern for people
more optimistic than Pound or Eliot
To a Poor Old Woman (p.136)














munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste good to her
You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)





a full-time businessman in an insurance company
(p.138)
used words for their sound rather than their meaning
In“Flyer’s Fall,” he describes when a man dies:
Darkness, nothing, of human after-death,
Receive and keep him in the deepnesses of space –
God does not exist and all religions are false
not sad about the meaninglessness of life because we
can create our own order and gods – “Supreme
Fiction” which we create to give meaning to our lives
“Anecdote of the Jar” (1923)
“the jar” is the “upreme Fictions” of the
poet, like a new god
 the poet organizes that wilderness and
gives it order and meaning
 creates a language of a myth

Anecdote of the Jar (p.139)

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.