Modern and Post
Modern Poetry
Characteristics of Modern Poetry
1.
Bold experimentation in style and form
 Imagists—poem based on a single image
 Symbolist—presents idea based on symbols for reader to interpret
 Impressionist—presents unrefined first impression
2.
Non-traditional sources for inspiration on subject
 Most traditional sources—Nature and Romantic Love or Loss,
always meant to be universal in theme
► Classical Chinese Poetry inspired Ezra Pound
► 19th century French Symbolist Poetry
3.
Poems had no fixed single meaning; often they had
multiples themes to interpret, it was up to the individual
reader to determine

As long as you back up your opinion on what you think the poem
means, you’re right!
Symbolism and 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
Imagism
► American
offshoot of Symbolism—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,
e.e. cummings, H.D.
Symbolism
► Characteristics
of Symbolism
 Didn’t merely describe objects—tried to portray
the emotional effects that objects can suggest
 Felt that most symbols were overused and
trite—stressed the need to trust in the
nonrational
 Imagination is more reliable than reason
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—became the inspiration for
his collection of poems (epitaphs)
►Epigrams were inscriptions written on monuments
in ancient Greece
 Modern epigrams have a short, satirical twist or
surprise at the end.
►Masters created a collection of epitaphs (traditional
inscriptions on a gravestone) that combined
traditional epitaphs and Modern epigrams
Edgar Lee Masters
► Decided
to write a book of epigraphs that would
reveal the dark underside of small town life
 Gossip/Rumors
 Addictions
► Published
--Affairs
--Secrets
Spoon River Anthology in 1915
 Created fictional town of Spoon River, IL
► Rejected
traditional forms—all poems are in free verse
► Subject: the truth behind the happy façade of small town life
 Over 250 epitaphs. When read together, they create a
full and vibrant picture of small town life in America
► Epitaphs
are written in the voice of the dead, and an entire life
is usually revealed through one incident that is remembered,
even in death
 These epitaphs are also known as: Dramatic
monologue—a poem in which the
character/speaker addresses a silent listener
Spoon River Anthology
“Blind Jack”
I HAD fiddled all day at the county fair.
But driving home, "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire,
who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle
to the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the
horses till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to
get out as the carriage fell in the ditch, and was
caught in the wheels and killed. There's a blind
man here with a brow as big and white as a cloud.
And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, writers
of music and tellers of stories, sit at his feet and
hear him sing of the fall of Troy.
Ralph Rhodes
ALL they said was true:
I wrecked my father's bank with my loans to dabble in wheat; but
this was true-- I was buying wheat for him as well, who
couldn't margin the deal in his name because of his church
relationship. And while George Reece was serving his term I
chased the will-o-the-wisp of women and the mockery of wine
in New York. It's deathly to sicken of wine and women when
nothing else is left in life. But suppose your head is gray, and
bowed on a table covered with acrid stubs of cigarettes and
empty glasses, and a knock is heard, and you know it's the
knock so long drowned out by popping corks and the pea-cock
screams of demireps-- and you look up, and there's your theft,
who waited until your head was gray, and your heart skipped
beats to say to you: the game is ended. I've called for you, Go
out on Broadway and be run over, they'll ship you back to
Spoon River.
“Thomas Rhodes”
VERY well, you liberals
And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors
through heights imaginative, Blown about by
erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You
Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee
Claflin Shopes– You tound with all your boasted
wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul
from splitting into cellular atoms. While we,
seekers of earth's treasures Getters and hoarders
of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,
Even to the end.
Metapoetry
►
Defined as a poem about poetry
 Wallace Stevens
►Believed that the goal of poetry is to capture the
interaction between the private world of the mind
and reality.
 How does our imagination shape the way we see the world
around us?
►Uses
imagery and precise language
 Archibald MacLeish
►Lyric poetry: a melodic poem that expresses the
observations and feelings of a single speaker
Metapoetry
► Marianne
Moore
 Explored more traditional subjects—animals,
nature, poetry itself
►Wrote
objectivist poetry: poems that focus on a
single subject (person, place, or object) and render it
objectively (without personal judgment) and in detail
► All
three poets use imagery to suggest
theme
► All three poets use simile, metaphor,
personification to evoke theme
Robert Frost
1874-1963
►
►
Originally from Ca.; family settled in Mass. after the early
death of Frost’s father
Educated at Dartmouth College
 Dropped out after a few months
 Worked in a textile mill and wrote poetry
►
Married young, enrolled at Harvard
 Lasted less than two years: not supportive of his type of traditional
poetry
►
Worked as a teacher, editor; eventually settled on farming
 Decided farming wasn’t good for poetry writing either
►
1912: relocated his family to England to focus on writing
career
Robert Frost
►
Characteristics of Frost’s Poetry
 Devoted to traditional forms with a twist
► Rhyme scheme often used
► Meter is often used
► The twist?
 Blank Verse: poetry written without a rhyme scheme but in a specific
metrical pattern (usually iambic pentameter)—affects the sound and mood
of poem
 Conversational language
 Pastorals: poems that focus on a rural setting--Frost focused on
American landscapes, specifically New England
►
Traditionally, pastorals present an idealized view of rural life
 Known for “cranky realism”—rural life is filled with accidents, conflicts, and
ethical lapses
Robert Frost
► “Birches”
 Style: Blank Verse
►Unrhymed
iambic pentameter
►Sounds like conversational English
►Relies on other sound effects than rhyme to create
poetic elements
 Alliteration
 onomatopoeia
 Comment about nature in this poem?
►Nature
can help us re-experience the freedom and
innocence of childhood, when adulthood is too much
for us
Robert Frost
► “Mending
Wall”
 Perfect example of a Frost pastoral
►Consider
what aspects of rural life this poem
addresses
 Relationship with neighbors
 Destruction of man made by nature
► Does this poem idealize these aspects of rural life, or is
Frost offering a more complex vision of country living
 Notice the form—Blank Verse
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
 Concrete poetry: poetry in which the typographical
arrangement of words is as important in conveying the
intended effect as the conventional elements of
the poem
Heavily influenced by French symbolism and Whitman’s
free verse
e. e. cummings
► Characteristics




of cummings poetry
Unconventional punctuation
Unconventional capitalization and spelling
Use of typography symbols
Jubilant lyricism
►Celebration
of love
►Beauty of nature
►Affirmation of the individual
“in Just-”
cummings never titled his poems…sorta like Emily Dickinson 
in Justspring when the world is mudluscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far
and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
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
far
and
wee
whistles
“the hills”
the hills
like poets put on
purple thought against
the
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in gold, which presently
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the
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Characteristics of Post-Modern
Poetry (1945-1985)
► There
is no single dominant style of poetry
during this period
 Narrative poems (tell a story)
 Observational, philosophical, and reflective
poems
 Sense of alienation
 Poems as diary or journal
 Poems that reinterpret the self in context of
others (“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath)
Post Modern Poetry
► Sylvia
Plath and Anne Sexton
 Both poets are known for use of figurative
language
►Simile
and metaphor
 Both used language to capture painful emotions
 Both explored the pressures society places on
women, specifically standards of beauty and
mental health
Post Modern Poetry
► Theodore
Roethke
 Family owned greenhouses when he was a kid; wrote
lots of observational poems about nature
 Found it difficult to relate to others; related to the world
through his poetry
 Use of figurative language in poems—sound effects
primarily
► Alliteration:
repetition of consonants at beginning of words
► Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds in words (not necessarily
at the beginning of word)
► Consonance: repetition of constant sounds in the middle or at
the ends of words