Among the key elements of Modernist literature in general are formal experimentation and the notion of an “avant-garde,” that is, a small group of artists and thinkers at the forefront of creative work whose ideas are ahead of popular tastes. Certainly writers such as Pound, Eliot, Stein, etc., were much less concerned with establishing a large audience than with challenging some of the conventions surrounding literature. For many people, their work remains challenging and difficult. What are some of your response to their work, and what conclusions can you draw from these responses?
March 10, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I thought the poetry we read for class was all highly creative and deeply thought out. I have always been interested in elegant poetry and all of these works seemed to be written in an elegant style. I really liked the vivid descriptions of the images in the Amy Lowell poem, “September, 1918.” The cacophony in line 14 (“And note the crips variety of its flights of leaves”) is outstanding and brings out the image of crunching, crackling, fall leaves on the ground and falling from trees. I did not care so much for Stein’s “The Making of Americans.” I found it hard to focus on the point of the story. I did find the writing style interesting, conveying repetition by using repetition. In my opinion, however, it tends to get old and really shouldn’t take up 12 pages. Reading it was an experience that I can now claim that I’ve done, though.
March 10, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I thought the peoms in this weeks readings are more internal than external they seem to be sending a message about their inner thoughts rather than poetic words for nature or the oustide world. Also there seems to be a intentional non focus on nature which is the primary agent for alot of poems of the previous genre. LIke modernist stories the poems oftem seem to hint at meaning rather than say it outright. The T.S. Elliot poem is interesting and also complex. Is it a poem about self doubt and insecurieties during middle age as the first few stanza’s seem to hint at or is it a love poem ? whose arms are bare and white his or a lovers?
March 10, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I though that Stein’s “The Making of Americans” was very unique in style in that the concept of repetition was brought out so much that the length of the excerpt was almost unnecessary, but gave more meaning to the authors focus. In essence, I believe Stein was trying to convey the image that although some things in our lives change, our basic behaviors stay the same and we keep repeating these cycles throughout the course of our lives resulting in numerous scenarios that illustrate the various events throughout our lives. When Stein talks about these events being recorded, I don’t believe that he means to physically write down what everyone did, but that everyone co-existed amongst each other all repeating the same behaviors that resulted in the interaction with other people. Although I found myself losing focus a couple times throughout this reading, I found it very interesting how Stein perceived the course of life and human interaction.
March 11, 2008 at 10:24 am
I agree. It is difficult for me to enjoy poems of that length. I had to take about three breaks in the process of reading it. I did, however, enjoy the repetition symbolizing American behavior as cyclical. My favorite of the poems was “September, 1918.” Amy Lowell creates cool imagery that incites my imagination.
March 11, 2008 at 10:59 am
I found myself drawn to Ezra Pound’s poems more than anything else in the readings. In “A Pact,” I found his tone playful, yet earnest. In lines 6 and 7, Pound brings attention to the fact that there is always the possibility of development. “It was you that broke the new wood / Now is a time for carving,” suggests that the time is now, and the ability to change a movement into something completely different is fully possible. Wood is something that can be fabricated into a variety of things, such as theories and ideologies may also grow and transform.
March 11, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I thought that Stein’s work was almost painful to read. It fits “modernism” due to its “difficult and awkward” style. Stein obviously doesn’t care about whether or not people like the writing, for as the footnote says, Stein was aware that people would find the writing annoying, but continued to write approximately 500 pages.
March 11, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I did not find the poems that difficult. I actually really enjoyed Pound’s ” A Pact” and “In a Station of the Metro.” I was able to decipher these poems without much difficulty. I normally do not enjoy poetry but these poems seemed more real to me and maybe that made them easier to understand. I especially enjoyed the metro poem because the scene was easily pictured. Many people know what a subway looks like and how the people of a subway look and act. To me that poem spoke the truth of an actual metro.
March 11, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I firmly believe that Stein was not worried in the least about the reception that ‘Making of Americans’ would receive. The work is so repetitive that I found myself more annoyed than interested in the content. I believe that, for this period, Stein was writing in a very unique style. Unique styles, however, are often trial and error and I believe that Stein’s style of writing in this piece did not “take off” so to speak. An explosion of similar work did not erupt from the literary community. I can understand the authors of this period wanting to be creative and break the rules. Historically, the literary world was inundated with rules for writing. I can see the desire to diverge a bit from the normal rule-regulated poetry that was so historically pervasive. Sometimes the description of an individual does not require the complexity of asonnet or villanelle. Without the “avant garde” approach in literature, new styles of writing would never have emerged.
March 11, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I found Stein’s work especially annoying. I just couldn’t get past the repetition. To me it just seemed like the writer was trying to fill the pages up with words. I know that the repetition is supposed to symbolize the repetition of life, but I just could not concentrate on it. I think the hardest part of it all was that the words just kept blurring together while I was trying to read. I did however, really enjoy Pound’s, “A Station of the Metro”. I loved how it was so unique (two lines), and also how it was able to bring such vivid imagery in just those two lines. It was definitely my favorite poem out of the ones for this section.
March 12, 2008 at 1:45 pm
My style really isn’t in tune with the modernist poets of the 1910s. Naturalist and Realist works seem to be much more authentic… London didn’t develop a mindset and write within it, his themes were basic and comprehendible. Writers in this modernist era are apparently trying to define a period by writing what they feel is “modern” or avant-garde. Their modernist projections weren’t received very well during the modernist period, or even today, which is why their work is perceived as challenging and difficult. This era is probably really important because it brought about an attitude which challenged convention, challenged the idea of war, and opened the door for women’s rights… But still, I find it difficult to appreciate it as art.
March 12, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I feel that poets involved in modernist movement and their view towards poetry is at times a bit ridiculous . The poetry is very deep in meaning and paints vivid imagery in the poems. However, I believe that the poets view of high class poetry and that their poems are beyond a person without a deeper knowledge is what is ridiculous. On what level of does one have an avant-grade or has a deeper understanding of life. It would be like if I referenced aspects of my life and my friends life in my poems. If you don’t get my deep/avant-grade poems or writings, I really don’t care. All what matters is my group of friends and I understand the significance behind my poems, and that makes it avant-grade.
March 13, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Stein’s poetry definately “challenges” more than just convention…like my patience, for example. I do see how the repetition works to help provide and solidify the idea that she was going for. She really does indeed make a statement by doing this. I do, however, think she could have made the same statement in a few less pages and been just as effective. You can compare it to the other works we read. All of these pieces made their own strong statements, but many of these other poems were only a few lines long.
March 13, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Reading through Gertrude Stein’s “The Making of Americans” for the first time I really didn’t think too in depth about what I was reading or the kind of statement she was making. After discussing Stein in class I started to think more about what I had read. Truthfully, almost everyone seemed to be annoyed by what they read, I wasn’t so much. I actually found the repetition a bit hilarious and as I thought about the things she was saying about ‘americans’ I found myself laughing and saying to myself that it was so true. Her story seems to me like a big joke that went horribly wrong because no one took it as a joke. I liked it!
March 14, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I would have to say that I responded differently to each poem, but felt that my most strong reactions were towards Eliot and Stein. Stein’s work was frustrating at times, it seems that she viewed language in a completely different manner than the other poets. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” flits from image to image using a wide variety of vocabulary and makes a strong statement within a poem of 131 lines. Whereas Stein repeats the same phrases numerous times to make a statement, making one question whether she is brilliant or simply redundant.
March 15, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I’ve always had mixed feelings about poetry. It tends to be the most common form of literature to suffer the tendency people have to read more into things than is actually there. We poke and prod, and analyze every which way, and through that we learn something, and yet sometimes we still miss the point entirely. But such is the nature of understanding, that what we know and expect will always taint our impression in some way. The best writers know this, and abuse it. As to examples of this..Frost’s classic poem, The Road Not Taken, gives an impression entirely reliant on one’s own perception. It’s all a matter of which pieces stand out and leave an impression on those particular viewers. This was part of the reason for frost’s success; it was easy for people to read what they wanted out of his poems. Stein, on the other hand, reveals a good understanding on process of thought and the way we read in general in her exerpt from “The Making of Americans,” where the reaction we have is exactly that she lead us to. It’s actually quite enjoyable if you just flow with it, without trying to truly analyze it, but as it wears on it drains on you, a point Stein uses specifically to get her point across. I may be the only one who enjoyed this writing, but I enjoyed it because I could see what she was doing. Now the point to note here, is that looking over my analysis tells me that I am wrong. For there is something truly beautiful about her work that is not captured in the draining idea, and she really doesn’t ever emphasise repetition as a negative point. But in seeing it as a negative point, and the effect it has on us, it’s an easy assumption to make, which is precisely my point, and a problem that applies to poetic analysis in particular. It can be difficult to discern the meaning standing behind it, particularly when we look too deep for that meaning, and it’s in poetry more than anywhere else that we seek out that deeper meaning that oftentimes, just isn’t there, often missing the true purpose in the process.
March 16, 2008 at 1:55 pm
My reactions to each poem were quite different. However, since there are so many, I will only focus on two. For instance, Lowell’s “September, 1918″ really made me think about what the world was like during WWI via a man’s perspective. I like how Lowell divided his poem in half- the first part is about the peaceful scenery that surounds the narrator and the second part is about hoping that “some day there will be no war” and the narrator is unable to be peaceful like his scenery because he is trying to balance himself in a broken world. This is very upsetting to me- mainly since WWI was suppose to be “the war to end all wars” yet we sadly still have war today.
In addition, I must admit that I was a bit taken aback by Pound’s “To Whistler, American” mainly since he calls the readers, along with Abe Lincoln, idiots. This particular poem is suppose to be a tribute to Whistler, who was an American painter, yet instead of praising Whistler’s work, he insults the reader and basically tells us that we’re not getting what life and art is all about. I thought this was really gutsy of him to do- especially during his time since I am certain that many people were probably very offended by it- especially by the last stanza.
March 16, 2008 at 3:52 pm
It’s interesting to read everyone’s response to the poems — they are a very diverse group of writers, even though there are certain themes and formal elements that many of them share. Obviously people have pretty strong reactions to Stein’s prose as well — like contemporary performance art, her writing is really all about the reaction that it provokes in readers.
A couple of comments on Kristen’s post: Lowell is a woman, which complicates the perspective of the poem perhaps, but doesn’t change the response you had to its depiction of the war. And… not that I want to be put in the position of defending Ezra Pound’s views (that’s a tall order), but he actually exempts Abe Lincoln from the majority of “dolts” — whether he’s including us, the readers, among “us” or “them” is probably open for debate…
March 16, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Poets like Stein, Pound, and Eliot were expatriates of America. At the time of their writings, nazism, communism and fascism were all popular ideologies of particular nations. Pound was a firm believer in Fascism. These ideologies have a few things in common. They all have a Nationalist ideal, that is they believe that their nation is more important than the individual. This begins the backwards thinking that the civilian is not important. Which also leads to feelings of superiority. These views are also expressed in the poets of the time. These writings are elitist.
Sometimes it’s funny how closely intertwined history and literature are tied together.
March 16, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I am intrigued by the selection of poems we were asked to read for last week. I assert that there are different styles of writing (and perhaps different audiences?) being represented. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is more thickly veiled than, for example, William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow.” I remember discussing the latter poem in a previous class. The discussion was based upon a similar argument which comes up in artwork: “my five year old could write that.” Juxtaposed with Eliot’s “. . . Prufrock,” “The Red Wheelbarrow” can be easily overlooked for obvious reasons. Where as “. . . Prufrock” is probably more likely to be associated with “Aah yes, I’ve heard of that.” This leads me to question: what are the ultimate criteria for poetic merit? Can there even be such criteria? Is it dependant upon the decade it is being written and/or the audience (think class structure; language etc.) it is addressing? Is the only test of poetic merit literary endurance (i.e. Shakespeare)? This is an issue I am addressing in my Honors Thesis (based on Victorianism) and the overlap I see here with Modernism seems to present the same problem: how does one discern what is “good” as opposed to “great” poetry?
March 16, 2008 at 11:14 pm
In addition to the overlap I saw from the problem of assigning poetic authenticity (based on the selections themselves, and the poetry background from on my thesis) the diverse responses in these blogs posts alone exemplify that there is yet to be one single criterion for a universally pleasing poem or poet.
Furthermore, added on to this problem is the modernist avante garde appraoch to poetry. Perhaps then, what is most notable, is not so much what the poems are saying (content) but what they are showing (structure) and how. I keep noticing a consistent theme of lack within these poems. By “lack” I mean, a lack of explanation and a lack of concrete truth.
As mentioned, the historical contexts within which these poems are being written are of critical significance. One of the best examples of this is William Carlos Williams’s 1934 poem, “This Is Just to Say.” The meaning of this poem shifts dramatically when read with the knowledge that it was published the same year as the Wheeler-Howard Act passed. Essentially, the Wheeler-Howard Act reversed the Dawes Act, and allowed American Indians to set up tribal governments and increase funding on the reservations. There is much more to be said about this act and the complictions which occurred both leading up to and following it. I suggest reading the poem in context.
However, this notion of a temporal context brings me back to my first blog post. Is there something inherently less-valuable about a poem which must be read within the frame of a political movement?
March 22, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I thought that Stein’s “The Making of Americans” was too long of a section because in order for me to truly grasp what the author is trying to tell me, I need it to be short and to the point. I took several reading breaks from that little section and often found myself looking at the words whilst thinking of other things. I found his study of human interaction amusing though it seemed very unnecessary to include such pin-point details. I think the main reason why I couldn’t get into this was my opposition with modernist poets. I like to live in a fantasy world with poetry and get pretty bored when something is too plain.
March 23, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I enjoyed Wallace Steven’s “The Emperor of Ice Cream.” While it seemed to be nonsense to me for the first few times I read through it, I soon began to understand what was going on. I understood the poem to depict a relationship. In the first stanza, the boy describes the young love that exists between he and his girl; their dates to the ice cream parlor seem to be enough for their innocent relationship. Steven’s imagery in the first stanza helps to illustrate how children pick up on the smallest details of life. The newspaper boy is entranced by the older, musculcar, cigar-roller. Steven perfected word choice when he describes the “concupiscent curds” of ice cream. I read the second stanza to depict the young boy grown into a man, reflecting on the loss of his young love as she marries another. Instead of the loving and innocent imagery used in the first stanza, the second stanza is filled with harsh words such as “horny feet protrude” and “dumb.” She, as a lamp (with her wedding veil as the lamp shade possibly), has cast her light on another. Her young love is hurt, but he clings to the simple times they shared at the ice cream parlor. I loved the dramatic differences between the two poems and the realistic evolution (or dissolution) of the relationship that he depicts.
March 23, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I enjoy reading poetry very much and found the poems by Pound, Lowell, Stein, and Eliot very facsinating to read! Each poem had a deep connection and each with different characteristics. The first poem In a Station of the Metro, was a little different and very short. The title of the poem right away gave you where the setting of the poem was and I thought that was interesting. It had a lot of meaning to it and I had to read it over a couple of times to understand it. My favorite poem out of the bunch is To Whistler, American. This poem is about a tribute to “our first great” painter. He looked at paintings and wrote about them. I am exctied to read poems for next week by Frost, Stevens, and Williams.
March 24, 2008 at 7:18 pm
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is one of my favorite poems. It has so many hidden meanings within it. Because I am an art minor, I am basing my final portfolio on this poem. The imagery is amazing. There are so many feelings, thoughts and images that can be drawn from it. I wish we had a little more time in class to discuss this poem, because it is so complex.
March 24, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I always have the tendency to despise poetry, as I spent a semester in an AP English class in high school wholly on analyzing poetry. Not only that, but it wasn’t exactly the freedom to analyze poetry in his/her own view but rather analyzing it according to what the answer is going to be on the test. The poems discussed for class did not bother me so much as I’ve come to learn that the majority of the students are given the freedom to interpret it in their own way. Steven’s “The Idea of Order at Key West” is probably my favorite out of the selections because it was an older poem that I studied throughout a course in high school and ended up writing a paper on it, many regarding the fantastic imagery the author never ceases to capture. Stein’s selection bored me the most. I’m tired of repetition and I tend to enjoy selections that are more to the point, or at least more entertaining if they tend to be long.
March 24, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I have always known that Robert Frost is considered one of America’s premiere poets, but I never realized how dark his poems could be. I also found myself thinking about Walt Whitman and his writings on America. Walk Whitman wrote of our strengths, tenacity, and how glorious a country we are. Frost showed some of dark sides of what makes us as great as we are. The poem “Out, Out–” is a perfect example. It shows that we are hardworking and strong, but that we take our young and make them do work that is much too hard and much too dangerous for them. He shows us the consequences of using children to do adults work. It does seem interesting that one of our most famous poets is one that writes poetry that could be taken to be an indictment of America and what makes her great.
March 25, 2008 at 11:14 am
For me, Modernist poetry is hit and miss. I enjoyed Eliot, Frost, and Williams and remember reading them from previous lit classes. Frost is like the less modern poets, with similar rhythms and voices of previous work. I like the simplicity of “The Red Wheelbarrel” but I think there is more to it then just the words. Similarly, Pound’s “Metro” is simplistic in words, but the imagry is clear when one knows what he is speaking of. Stein’s work is less of my liking. It seems like the words have no meaning behind them. Although some of the others have different or unusal styles, the reader can see at least some theme or point behind them, or at least comprehend that the words have some order. Stein’s selection from “Making of America” is less comprehensable. Perhaps that is the point.
March 25, 2008 at 1:10 pm
For the most part, I have enjoyed all of the poems we have read. Pound’s poem, “In a Station of the Metro” says very little and yet so much at the same time. I like to unpack poems I read and figure out their meanings.
Frost is one poet that I have never really liked. Yet, after the lectures about his poetry I find that he is now one of my favorites. I’m not sure if I was just misreading his poetry of if I just wasn’t taking the time to understand it, but it seems to make a lot more sense now.
Overall, my favorite poem was “September, 1918″ by Lowell. The last lines of this poem leave a big impression upon the reader. Not only does the poem convey an intense image of trying to figure out one’s place in the world, but you also get a sense of what could be…you see images of everyday things–boys collecting berries, trees, houses side by side–and then she says “someday there will be no war.” She is kind of describing the beauty of what normal life will be like once the war is over.
March 25, 2008 at 7:57 pm
i feel differently about all of the poems we have read. I do not enjoy them all, but some i love. I enjoy all of the Frost’s poems because they use language that is easier to understand. it has a message that does take some time to understand and I do read through it a few times but they don’t seem to be filled with some of the jibberish that i completely do not understand until i come into class and have it explained such as the Emperor od Ice Cream. I do altogether like the modernists poets and i like their approach to poetry. i think they bring up valid points of the future and present state of humanity and society
March 26, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I agree with Jolene in that I enjoy Robert Frost’s poetry because of simpler language he uses. The poem I liked the best, especially after discussing it in class, was The Oven Bird. When I read through it the first time, I didn’t pick up on all of the symbolism represented in the poem. My favorite line, (after I found out what it meant!) is “Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten”. I think it is very unique how he compares the seasons with the hours on the clock. It almost seems to have a melancholy feel to it because all of the wonderful things that summer brings are at the beginning of their end. On another note, I am not a huge fan of William Carlos William’s The Red Wheelbarrow. I understand that there is a lot of symbolism and deeper meaning connected with that poem as well, but, as was said in class, it just sounds like a well-written, descriptive sentence.
March 26, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I certainly did notice the experimental elements present in all of the poems, most notably Stein’s “The Making of Americans.” I will readily admit that I was one of the readers who was immensely irritated by her style of writing in that particular selection. Stein’s point in writing the way she did was to show, rather than just tell, how people all seem to be replicas of one another and individualism seems like it is a lost or futile cause. The repetition in Stein’s piece was definitely interesting and experimental, but I also found it frustrating and maddening – nonetheless, a good example of the notion of “avant garde” in modernism.
March 27, 2008 at 10:47 am
Personally I do not really care for their poetry. I prefer poetry that describes a historical event or describes nature. I think poetry like this is just meant to be “Look at me, and you should feel how I feel and if you don’t then I am better than you”. This effort to tell people how you do not like something just seems to be really whiny. If you really want to show someone how you feel then do something rather than writing about it. Not only that but we talk in class about how these writers purposefully write so that most people (especially uneducated people) can not understand what they are writing about. I find this to be snobish and selfish. People read poetry to get some meaning out of it, and when they do not understand what the writer is talking about it turns them off. And that is why a lot of people do not like reading poetry
March 27, 2008 at 11:07 am
I thought all of the poetry we read was unique. Each author had their own way of showing their inner thoughts through different images that were unique. The way they wrote definetly makes your statement that the poets “were much less concerned with establishing a large audience than with challenging some of the conventions surrounding literature”. It is hard for me to personally choose a favorite, but T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has always stuck out. However I am also a huge fan of Frost’s poetry and the darkside to what could be at first glance a really light poem.
March 31, 2008 at 5:37 am
i, personally, am a big fan of Robert Frost’s poetry. i say this because i have come to relate to some of frost’s theme’s and theories in his regard to solitude. He almost seems to embrace being alone at certain times, this is where he and I have similar thoughts. I also feel that being alone, especially during the hours of night, is almost liberating. it is as if the world is dead amoung the dark hours, thus making the one who remains awake feel more alive. Frost addresses situations like these in a very realistic way, while at the same addressing the feelings that come with these situations with a subtle abstraction… So Mr. Frost here’s to you… I dig it
March 31, 2008 at 7:07 pm
One of my personal favorites from the poetry that we read was Lowell’s “September, 1918.” I believe that it is something that many from the current generation can identify with. Though the circumstances of the current war and the war that was the topic of this poem are completely different, one can still draw similarities between how people then felt and how current citizens feel. Lowell’s social commentary is truly intriguing in that it causes the reader to seriously question his or her surroundings and the enjoyment which he or she receives from them. The poem also makes an adequate point in calling into question whether things are enjoyed more in a state of peace or not. Personally I believe that to some extent the questions Lowell raises are questions that people are currently pondering now.
April 1, 2008 at 9:34 am
I also am a fan of Frost’s literature, most of Frost’s poetry involves nature, and gives the reader a sense of tranquility at times because he portrays a particular scene so very well. For example the poem Birches by Robert Frost makes me feel as if i am also experiencing this scene, and is a very pleasing read because it appeals to me very much in a visual sense.
April 1, 2008 at 9:40 am
On the other hand i was not a big fan of Stein’s literature we have read, it seems so monotonous at times, as stated previously the length of the piece may be a bit overkill, it presents a good argument and portrays the American way of life as repetitive, although i found some humor int his portion of the literature, because she is being repetitive with the words repeating, repetition etc. Although, it serves to prove a much more significant point about the behavior of the American public, and it seems to point out the ridiculousness of our behaviors.
April 3, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I am not very good at reading poetry at all! I do not get anything out of it until we discuss it in class….I’m not sure what it is, but I have never been able to exactly relate to it. Maybe I have yet to read or find that special poet that hits me, but I do try!! I do have to say that I loved how Pound poked fun at Whitman! That was very gutsy and I admire the way he spoke his mind…
April 6, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I loved learning about Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and finding out that it really didn’t mean what I had assumed it to mean! I was one of the typical people who thought it was meant as sort of an “inspirational” poem that encourages people to take their own path. This has got to be one of the most mis-quoted, taken-out-of-context poems I’ve ever heard of. As Professor Dudley says, the poem is about not knowing what the choice you make means until after you have lived it. And even then, you will never truly know what that choice means because you can’t relive that moment and choose the other path. It was so interesting to see how that poem has been taken out of context over and over in American culture.
April 6, 2008 at 10:39 pm
On another note, my favorite poem of the entire section was T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It’s so vivid and so complex.
The narrator in the poem reminds me of Amos Hart in “Chicago”- the man who sings Mr. Cellophane. Middle-age man who speaks and nobody listens to him or pays any attention to him. Women certainly don’t, as he makes clear over and over in the poem.
In the eighth stanza, the narrator speaks of his indecision and inability to communicate with women. Eliot paints a picture of a man who is “with a bald spot in the middle of (his) hair” and who doesn’t dare disturb the universe and trouble them with his presence or thoughts.
In the end, Prufrock decides not to even try to “disturb the universe” and just wonders what might have been. He makes excuses for himself, but I think ultimately he knows he is too scared to take a risk.
He contrasts himself to Hamlet, who ultimately made a decision, and says he is more like “an attendant lord”- one who is “glad to be of use / Politic, cautious, and meticulous / Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; / At times, indeed, almost ridiculous– / Almost, at times, the Fool”. Eliot ends the poem with Prufrock going into a lonely old age, never having taken that chance.
April 7, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Robert Frost has been one of my favorite poets since I was in high school, so it was easy for me to get into the Modernist poetry. Frost a very subtle, but yet solid, way of introducing issues within his poetry. Compared with Frost, Pound and Eliot are a bit more blunt with revealing the messages within their poetry. Modernist poetry is a very dark genre, full of hidden messages and meanings. I have become very fond of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Eliot’s poem has so many different contrasting lines, the first part of a stanza will be very romantic and by the end it will create a more dark image.
I have also enjoyed reading Pound’s work, although it seems a bit to anger-motivated for me. Pound’s work could be classified as a well-designed rant about the issues that anger him the most. However, Pound has a momentum in his poetry that keeps you going and going until you’re just as pissed off as him by the end.
From all the modernist poets, I can feel the seriousness of their time and situation. You can tell that these poets tried many different methods of revealing the issues and concerns of their time – Pound used a more straight forward method as Frost used a more sublte, romantic strategy. All the poets demonstrate the dilemma between creation and destruction and apply it to society. By the end of their poems, you feel a sense of fear for the apocalypse of culture.
April 8, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I have always been a fan of Frost, and I am glad we got to go over his poems in class. I enjoyed hearing Professor Dudley talk about him and I learned a lot more about him through the powerpoints. Another poem I really enjoyed was Amy Lowell’s “September, 1918.” It made me feel like I was really experiencing her feelings, in the middle of such a hard time as the war. The shorter poems were pretty easy to understand, but some of them seemed almost pointless in a way, such as the poem “Just to Say.” Overall, I enjoyed the poetry unit and got a feeling for the different authors, which were a very diverse group of people.
April 29, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I really enjoyed the poem “The road not taken.” It is just so typical of what people do. You never know if you have chosen the “right” path until after you have taken it and wandered down that road for a while, and even then you will never truly know if it was the right decision because who knows what the other path had in store for you. This poem is truly a poem that really had me thinking about and relating to it after i read it. Another favorite was Pounds “A station at the metro” even though it was only 2 lines it was a very powerful poem and got its message across without having to drone on and on like some of the other poems we read.
April 30, 2008 at 4:04 pm
“If only there was a magic decoder ring (for poetry).”
Anyway, I must say I enjoyed the modernist poetry. True, I half liked it because it was easy to read while other poems made me laugh because I had no idea what they were talking about (which probably explains that negative number that appeared on that test). Still, I did enjoy and understand two of the poems more than the rest.
The first one has to be “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”. In fact, before I knew that if was supposed to represent life and death, made me laugh at the visuals Stevens so wonderfully described. Yet, it makes me wonder, how can something that is so morbidly explain life and death have such a cute title? Really … it’s just too cute of a title. It’s like telling us that if the neighbor dies, we get an ice-cream cone. … Not a bad idea now that I think about it.
The other poem I liked was “The Red Wheelbarrow”. At first I loved it because … wow, shortness! Buhyah! Yet, it kind of left me wondering, at first, why something so short was so popular. It seems Williams got his desired effect out of me now didn’t he? The point of the poem was the openness, the simplicity, or the concept of making something out of nothing. But, I think there was more to it than that. Why a wheel barrow? Why something you can fill? I believe the poem was so empty and simple, because William’s wanted us to fill that empty wheelbarrow with our own thoughts and desires.
April 30, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I am not a huge fan of poetry, but I do not mind reading it. I have not read most of the poems that we read for class, so it was interesting to me because of the fact that most of these were new to me.
In Pound’s poems, he uses imagism in several instances, such as in “In a Station of the Metro”. In this poem, the images that he wants the reader to think about include the faces and petals. I liked the poem, “A Pact” because it is hard to make amends with a rival, and in his case he was able to do that.
I enjoy Williams poetry because of the description that he uses in his writing. I especially enjoyed “Spring and All” because it reminds me of the spring that we are about to experience. When he goes into great detail in his poetry, the reader can imagine in their mind the picture that he is trying to paint with words. “The Red Wheelbarrow” however is a piece of writing that is unusual in its own way. It makes sense, however, why did he write this? It could be possible that Williams wanted to write something that would eventually be talked about in order to find the meaning behind it.
May 1, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Poetry is not my favorite piece of literature, but I did like Lowell’s “September 1918.” The descriptiveness maybe reminded me slightly of the war that is going on now, and the uncertainity that is present. Frost’s poems are alright in the sense that i think that i can figure them out and understand them. I did like “Mending Wall” because it reminds me of the everyday routines we sometimes feel we are just going through with, without knowing why. I also liked finding out the true meaning behind the poem “The road not taken.” Just goes to show how some things can be interpreted so differently.
May 1, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I think it would be a mistake to interpet The Emperor of Ice Cream as a lament of lost love. Poetry is subjective up to a point, but I think this poem has much more to do with loss of life than loss of love. The absurd images and diction in this poem reflect how crazy all the motions of life are in the context of death’s inevitability. I read it as saying that life has all these distractions and they are absurd when compared to death. And even when one expires the distractions continue just the same.
May 1, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I am not a big fan of poetry to begin with and Stein’s writing didn’t help with that. All of the repetition made it more difficult to want to continue and when you get bored, it’s harder to absorb the information. I get that symbolism is a big part of his writing but the uninteresting-ness outweighs the meaning. Pounds, “In A Station of the Metro” was genius though. Short, sweet, and simple with plenty to leave up to the imagination. That is the kind of poetry one can enjoy. It’s something that you can memorize and take with you and I like that.
May 1, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Modernist Poetry is unlike any previous form of poetry for a number of reasons. The language is inwardly focused than in previous periods. There is less of an emphasis on nature and relationships, and more of a focus on personal feelings and thoughts. I find this form of poetry much more rewarding and difficult to write. To express emotions in words is a very difficult task. People can easily say they are mad, or happy, but to fully explain the depths of that anger, or happiness is an admirable trait. While Pound seemed to focus more on the emotions of anger and irritability, I found him most enjoyable.
May 2, 2008 at 1:03 am
I really enjoyed the modernist poetry, especially that of Pound and Frost. First off, Ezra Pound. I really enjoyed him because i feel that while his poems, at first glance, seem very bland and simple, you know that they are also quite complex. This is evident in his poem, “In a Station of the Metro.” While it is only two lines, it has endless meanings. The simplicity of the poem, is obviously, the two lines, but there is also a complexity to this poem, and that comes in the form of the poems large number of possible meanings. So, I really enjoyed Pound’s simple, yet complex poems.
I really also enjoyed Frost’s poems, particularly, “The Road Not Taken.” I really enjoyed this poem because of the fact that it is usually viewed as a positive poem, but as soon as an individual really reads into the poem, it is actually the opposite. I think that the fact that the poem, has a simplicity about it, when compared to Eliot or Robert Burns, is the reason for the misconception about the meaning of the poem. Both Frost and Pound seem to have a common theme of complexity and simplicity. Overall, I really enjoyed this modernist poetry.
May 2, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I think what people find challenging to undestand in these poems is the fact that they deal with human emotion. It is easy to describe what the color of flowers and sky are. what smells there are. but it is very difficult to portray what emotion someone is going through. Not only is it hard in that way but the fact that different people will look at emotions differently. these writers were on the front line because they were the first to present these emotions in poems before people were really ready to look at themselves to try to connect with what was being said.
May 2, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Since reading Stein, I am amazed at how much I am noticing references to her. Honestly though, hated her writing. It’s not so much that it was difficult to read, but rather it was just irritating. I felt no emotion in her writing and wanted to throw the book halfway through. I will say that I appreciate her attempt at producing a new style of writing, though. It was quite imaginative and I respect her for producing a completely different piece of literature.
May 2, 2008 at 4:37 pm
The modernist poetry lead to an influx of similar writings. At this time, writers quit being so outwardly focused. They wrote less about what they noticed about nature with their senses and more about feelings and emotions. This poetry can be very emotional if you think about it. These writers were trying something new and starting a new genre. They wanted they writing to be fancy like fashion and art. These poems are difficult because they deal with raw emotions. Many people don’t even like to discuss their own emotions let alone read those of other people. It is impossible for the reader to feel what the author must have been feeling when he or she was writing these poems which makes it that much more difficult for us to understand them.
May 3, 2008 at 4:01 pm
The modernist poetry we read for class was extremely well thought out and beautiful. I found it to be amazing in that it does challenge one to think more extensively than the normal “Roses are red violets are blue” poems. It wasn’t all about peace love and happiness, it was about causing the reader to call into question different things, which is something that people ranging all the way back to Aristotle have been doing.