The Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry

Cambridge Introductions to Literature

by Peter Howarth

Modernist poems are some of the twentieth-century's major cultural achievements, but they are also hard work to read. This wide-ranging introduction takes readers through modernism's most famous poems and some of its forgotten highlights to show why modernists thought difficulty and disorientation essential for poetry in the modern world. In-depth chapters on Pound, Eliot, Yeats and the American modernists outline how formal experiments take on the new world of mass media, democracies, total war and changing religious belief. Chapters on the avant-gardes and later modernism examine how their styles shift as they try to re-make the community of readers. Howarth explains in a clear and enjoyable way how to approach the forms, politics and cultural strategies of modernist poetry in English.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2011

Reviews

[John Ferngrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

My involvement with poetry has been more about reading the complete works of a small number of poets than the breadth one acquires through edited anthologies. And it is really the Modernists, counting from Baudelaire and Whitman who have touched me most deeply. I can admire the word-smithery of Keats or Shelley but generally find their themes superficial, their psychological depth virtually absent. To me these earlier poets are a mode of decoration rather than penetrating art. Since adolescence I've had a penchant for scribbling my own little stanzas that have had interesting effects to my ears but for the most part they rarely added up to anything I felt to be finished. Then about ten years ago, after a major nervous breakdown and an indefinite amount of free time on my hands, my poetic efforts intensified, resulting in a sizeable collection of twenty or so, often quite long pieces. And there they sat; one or two read by a handful; comments complimentary or critical, sometimes baffling.

Then a few months back I had another look at them and found that most of them still had some power and resonance, at least for me. But then began a quest to really try and take on board some of the criticisms I had failed to really comprehend back when they were written. And, as often, once my analytical faculty really got down to work on these questions I hit a sort of bedrock when I finally asked the key question, what is a poem? What makes the neat rhyming quatrains of Keats or the dreamlike free verse of Eliot or the playful orthography of cummings all exemplars of the same art form? The corollary question then became were these efforts of mine actually poetry as might be recognised by those accustomed to reading it, and by what criteria might I assess their value? From these considerations other questions arose, the most important of which was what was the kind or the characteristics of the poetry that I actually wanted to write, and how to identify those qualities that made my poems good to me, regardless of what another reader might feel. So it was time to get serious. Time to read some books by people who had thought abought these things before. This was the first I came to but I'm pretty sure there will be more.

As well as deeply broadening my understanding of what poetry is and the many different ways it can be, this fine book has had the benefit of introducing me to some wonderful new poets, and giving me a substantial list of others with whom I would like to make acquaintance.

The opening chapter focuses on the recently rediscovered seminal Modernist poem, Paris: a poem by Hope Mirlees. This I read and reread multiple times and found critical resources on the web that helped me understand it pretty well completely.

Chapter two dealt with Ezra Pound whose Cantos I have skimmed without comprehension other than to appreciate the audacious holism of his project and recognise it as something I would like to work towards myself.

Chapter three is about my beloved Eliot, whose Prufrock was my first introduction to the deep love of poetry and whose Wasteland in particular has been a lifetime companion whose meaning for me has evolved over the years as I myself have gone through my changes.

Chapter four is dedicated to Yeats whose complete poems I have read several times with increasing closeness. He is a poet whom I admire rather more than love, but whose syntactic techniques have had a definite influence on what I myself have tried to write.

Chapter five discusses several of the interwar American Modernists of whom Wallace Stevens was one I have had on my 'want to check out' list for some years. At this point I interrupted my reading of this book which was proving a little pointless without familiarity with any of its exemplars. I took up Steven's Collected Poems and began working my way slowly through them, at first pretty baffled but eventually utterly enchanted by a mind who seemed to have discovered LSD a couple of decades before Albert Hoffmann. Stevens is now firmly entrenched in the inner sanctum of my pantheon. At around half way through his Collected Poems I felt able to pick this book up again and make meaningful progress.

Later chapters are concerned more with critical questions than the works of individual authors but throughout one continues to be introduced to new authors, new styles, new polarities of focus and purpose.

This book has set a reading agenda for me that is probably going to take at least the next year for me to pursue but as an additional gift it has given me a much clearer sense of what it is I would like to try and do. The pieces I wrote those years back I can look at now and know why I like them (and why certain tweaks have helped improved some of them, mostly simple excisions). But it has also been a catalyst that has got me writing new material at a much more regular pace and that is able to make stylistic explorations into new themes and concerns. As such, this little book has been invaluable. Thank you Peter Howarth.