A History of Modern Poetry, Volume II: Modernism and After

by Perkins

There have been many books on early modernist poetry, not so many on its various sequels, and still fewer on the currents and cross-currents of poetry since World War II. Until now there has been no single comprehensive history of British and American poetry throughout the half century from the mid-1920s to the recent past. This David Perkins is uniquely equipped to provide; only a critic as well informed as he in the whole range of twentieth-century poetry could offer a lucid, coherent, and structured account of so diverse a body of work.



Perkins devotes major discussions to the later careers of the first Modernist poets, such as Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams, and to their immediate followers in the United States, E. E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, and Hart Crane; to W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the period style of the 1930s; to the emergence of the New Criticism and of a poetry reflecting its tenets in William Empson, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell, and to the reaction against this style; to postwar Great Britain from Philip Larkin and the "Movement" in the 1950s to Ted Hughes, Charles Tomlinson, and Geoffrey Hill; to the theory and style of "open form" in Charles Olson and Robert Duncan; to Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poetry of the 1960s; to the poetry of women's experience in Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich; to the work of Black poets from Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks to Amiri Baraka; and to Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Merwin, A. R. Ammons, John Ashbery, and James Merrill.

Perkins discusses some 160 poets, mentioning many others more briefly, and does not hesitate to explain, to criticize, to admire, to render judgments. He clarifies the complex interrelations of individuals, groups, and movements and the contexts in which the poets worked: not only the predecessors and contemporaries they responded to but the journals that published them, the expectations of the audience, changing premises about poetry, the writings of critics, developments in other arts, and the momentous events of political and social history. Readers seeking guidance through the maze of postwar poetry will find the second half of the book especially illuminating.

Genres: Poetry, Literary Criticism, History

694 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kunst wird Kritik, "art is becoming criticism," as the devil notes in Mann's Doctor Faustus. Having been taught to explicate, the young poets were explicating for themselves their own poems in the process of writing them. They composed with the same kind and intensity of "reading" that their readers would in turn bring to bear. Wordsworth used to argue that every great poet must create the taste by which he is to be enjoyed, but Lowell, Berryman, Nemerov, and many another starting out were trying to create great poems to fit a taste that already existed. To the extent that they succeeded, recognition came instantly. This agreement between the producers and consumers of a style is a normal feature of the academic in art. As this state of affairs continued into the 1950s, the New Criticism established itself more firmly as an academic orthodoxy, and the desire to break with it became more intense.
from Chapter 5: "The Poetry of Critical Intelligence"

I picked up this behemoth of opinionated criticism from a used book shop because I enjoyed what he had to say about John Ashbery. David Perkins is certainly well-rounded in 20th century poetry. Though his main argument--that many poets struggled to break free of the New Critics--is intriguing, his argument is seriously undermined when Perkins can't seem to find any poets who broke free of the ivory tower of New Criticism worth reading:

Emotionally Spicer was self-thwarting and wounded; many of his poems quarrel with God and many others with lovers or with love. Because of their intellectuality and bitterness, his poems are rebarbative.

[Michael McClure] is a minor talent choked in pretensions.

Since I make a large claim for Duncan, I should acknowledge plainly that he can and often does write horribly. Many passages are hopelessly vague, inert, rhetorical, empty, or cliched...Readers who care about restraint, good taste, and the like have no business reading Duncan (or many contemporary poets), for such conceptions have no more relevance for him than they would for a bonfire.

[Merrill] Moore could compose two sonnets while waiting for a traffic light to change. Such facility was naturally unpromising, but a few of Moore's sonnets are readable.

I remarked in connection with the Cantos, something must motivate us to continue reading, and if it is not an emerging sense of a whole, meaningful experience, it can only be the delight we have from moment to moment. In this aspect Paterson fails in a way that matters seriously. From page to page there is much dull or even bad writing...Readers of the poem who consult their own feelings as they read, rather than the arguments of specialist defenders, will probably find that if they go on to the end, the cause of conscience rather than interest or pleasure.

And let's pause a moment right here with Perkins' take on William Carlos Williams' Paterson. Throughout the book, poets cite Paterson as an inspiration, yet Perkins dismisses those poets as well. However, he continually returns to Pound's Cantos as a literary feat which must be read and wrestled by serious students of modern poetry. Allow me to quote Perkins on answering a critical question raised by readers approaching Cantos:

How good are the Cantos as a whole? Or since evaluation is always personal, how much do I admire and enjoy them? Huge indictments can be brought against them. Pound's Fascist sympathies are and will remain troubling for as long as mankind remembers what Fascism was. His anti-Semitism is obvious as a method of presentation, ideogramic thinking, as the poem exemplifies it, is undisciplined and self-indulgent. In many places there is a ludicrous disproportion between the importance of the ideas, in Pound's view, and his unclear, distracting articulation of them. We cannot argue that such intellectual and moral offenses are irrelevant to the poem, for they pervade the poem, influencing subject matter, intention, and form. And in long stretches the Cantos are boring.

Got that, Gentle Reader? What is Perkins' evaluation? Well obviously...

Nevertheless, I admire the Cantos, and not only for the lyric passages everyone responds to. Pound's sense of the importance of texture justifies itself, for, however maddeningly difficult the texture of the Cantos may be, it rewards by brilliant effects that could be obtained in no other way. And it stays fresh. Passages can be read over and over with pleasure, for they summon creativity and always disclose new interrelations and possibilities of meaning.

What? Sure he's a boring anti-Semitic Fascist--but his writing is maddingly "fresh."

So is this leviathan of personal opinion worth reading? Sure--but be aware it's limited in scope and subjective in analysis. Perkins has pet poets (Eliot, Pound, Lowell, Ashbery, James Merrill) and uses them as a yardstick to evaluate the worth of other poets. There's interesting takes, but practically the entire book is a personal rant. Nevertheless, it provides insight into the convoluted and checkered history of poetry in the 21st century.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

As good as volume I, but not as interesting for the most part. That's probably just because I didn't know as much about the poetry covered in volume I, combined with the fact that most of the stuff covered in the last 180 pages of this one is guff. Perkins is rightly sceptical about much later twentieth century American poetry, and even when he praises he notes that there are huge problems - Ashbery, he admits, it boring; taking dictation from Ouija boards is, shall we say, not a great way to present yourself Mr Merrill.
The chapters on African-American, and feminist poetry are short and could probably be longer, the chapter on Nature Boy doggerel could certainly be shorter. The real downside to this volume is how little non-American post-war poetry is discussed- The UK as a whole gets 58 pages out of the 330 he sets aside for this period. Even from the evidence of this book, if you're going on quality that ratio should be reversed. A less even-handed author might cut the 330 back to 200 and give only 50 to America's innumerable, little, rebellious schools. On the other hand, chapter 16, on American poets who were formed by but rebelled against the New Criticism, gave me lots of names to hunt down.
Beautifully written, clear and concise despite its length.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinda sexy.

While its a bit stuffy for my tastes, the sheer volume of poetic history (however shaded, but its attempts to include those from all ethnicities, classes, modes, is impressive). Sometimes, one just has to delve into these things and enter poetic theory for the hell of it. While you may not agree in approaching the writing of poetry this way, its interesting nonetheless.

Its easy to read for the most part. In some places, my eyes glazed over. But hold out for pretty good nuggets on the relationships between prominent poets you may not hear about otherwise.

Yeah, I'm still trying to save up some dough to buy this thing. It ain't cheap. Probably the only drawback.

Although all its talk of schools and styles made me sad and wish people would just shut up and write poetry.

[Richard Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Perkins' exhaustive and sprawling account beginning with the High Modernists of the 1920s and culminating with a study of James Merrill's epic "The Changing Light at Sandover" some sixty years later provides a complete and highly engaging overview of English language poetry in the 20th century. The placing of works in context with one another, with biographical information regarding the authors, and with the prevailing literary movements of the time enhances the both the understanding and the relevance of the poetry discussed. This book is highly rewarding and well worth reading for anyone with an academic interest in modern poetry or even those who are simply curious about the lives and works of the 20th century's preeminent artists.

[Tom Walsh]

Too often, in poetry criticism, they just can't get passed TS Eliot or Whitman. But this edition covers all the major and minor poets. I'm jotting down many names to check-out books from the library because of this one!

[Gilbert Wesley Purdy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personally, I consult this as a reference book and therefore do not know if I will read the entire text. I have walked around in it enough to know that it is an unusually solid, informative text.