a poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which brought him to prominence. When Eliot completed his original draft of a long poem based on both the disintegration of his personal life and mental stability and of the culture around him, provisionally titled He Do the Police in Different Voices, he gave the manuscript to Pound for comment. After some heavy editing, The Waste Land in the form we now know it was published and Eliot came to be seen as the voice of a generation. The addition of notes to the published poem served to highlight the use of collage as a literary technique, paralleling similar practice by the cubists and other visual artists. From this point on, modernism in English tended towards a poetry of the fragment that rejected the idea that the poet could present a comfortingly coherent view of life. 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a poem by T. S. Eliot, marked the start of his career as one of the twentieth centurys most influential poets. ... Collage (From the French: , to stick) is regarded as a work of visual arts made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ... Woman with a guitar by Georges Braque, 1913 Cubism was an avant-garde art movement that revolutionised European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century. ...

Paris

Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso, 1906

Although many of the Imagists were Americans, they were essentially a London-based group. By the end of World War I, they had effectively ceased to exist as a movement and a number of them had more or less stopped writing poetry altogether. By 1920, Pound and Joyce were both Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso, 1906, in the public domain in the United States. ... Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso, 1906, in the public domain in the United States. ... Young Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) was a Spanish painter and sculptor. ... Combatants Allied Powers: Russian Empire France British Empire Italy United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary German Empire Ottoman Empire Bulgaria Commanders Nicholas II Aleksei Brusilov Georges Clemenceau Joseph Joffre Ferdinand Foch Herbert Henry Asquith Douglas Haig John Jellicoe Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Franz...

hosted by Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney, both of whom wrote poetry; Stein was to go on to become one of the most formally and linguistically innovative of modernist novelists. Many modernist poets and writers, including Pound, Joyce, Williams (on a trip to Paris) Mina Loy, Robert McAlmon, Djuna Barnes, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, and Ernest Hemingway attended these salons. Both Stein and Barney were openly lesbian and Barney, in particular, actively encouraged women writers. Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer and catalyst in the development of modern art and literature, who spent most of her life in France. ... Nathalie Barney (1876-1972), also known as Natalie Barney, was a American heiress who became well known as the mistress of a literary salon in France. ... Image:Loy-Haweis1904. ... Robert Menzies McAlmon (March 9, 1896 - February 2, 1956) was an American author, poet and publisher. ... Djuna Barnes [1] [2] [3] (June 12, 1892 - June 18, 1982) was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing by women and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role... E. E. Cummings Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), abbreviated E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, and playwright. ... Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio, United States – April 27, 1932 at sea) was a U.S. poet. ... Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. ... A lesbian is a female emotionally and/or sexually attracted only to other females. ...

One of the most active of these women, Mina Loy, was born in Britain, where she studied art, and first moved to Paris in 1902 to continue her studies. She soon became a regular at Stein's salon and exhibited her paintings both in Paris and London. In 1905, she moved to Florence where she mixed with the expatriate community and the Futurists, and had a relationship with their leader Filippo Marinetti. Her first poems, published in 1914, showed her familiarity with the work of other modernists and an advanced sense of formal experimentation. Her work was greatly admired by both Pound and Williams, amongst others. In a 1917 review of her work, Pound coined the term logopoeia, which he defined as 'a dance of the intelligence among words and ideas' to describe her poetry. Florences skyline Florences skyline at night from Piazza Michaelangelo Florence (Italian: ) is the capital city of the region of Tuscany, Italy. ... This article is about the art movement, futurism. ... Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (Born December 22, 1876 in Alexandria, Egypt. ... In literary analysis, logopoeia or logopeia refers to the verbal impact of poetic language. ...

These writers found themselves exposed to a general culture of artistic ferment in their adopted city, particularly in the visual arts and music. Artists like Picasso, Georges Braque and Constantine Brancusi and musicians including Igor Stravinsky and George Antheil were part of their same social and artistic circles, and a high level of cross pollination between these arts and artists urged the poets towards ever greater levels of experimentation. A young Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was one of the recognized masters of 20th century art. ... Violin and Candlestick, Paris, spring 1910 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) Georges Braque (May 13, 1882 – August 31, 1963) was a French painter and sculptor who, with Pablo Picasso developed cubism and the cubist style, to become one of the major figures of 20th-century art. ... Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский, Igor Fëdorovič Stravinskij) (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a Russian composer who first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilevs Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet): LOiseau de feu (The Firebird) (1910), Petrushka (1911... George Antheil (June 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American composer and pianist of German and Lutheran descent, born in Trenton, New Jersey. ...

The Parisian expatriate community provided an environment in which literary experiment was encouraged and served as a major source of modernist writing in all genres, including poetry. This concentration of activity in one city also helped support a thriving small press publishing industry, with presses like McAlmon's Contact Editions and William Bird's Three Mountains Press publishing many of the key modernist texts of the period. The Dun Emer Press in 1903 with Elizabeth Yeats working the hand press Small press is a term often used to describe publishers who typically specialize in genre fiction, or limited edition books or magazines. ... Robert Menzies McAlmon (March 9, 1896 - February 2, 1956) was an American author, poet and publisher. ... William Byrd (1540? – July 4, 1623) was the most celebrated of early English composers. ... William Augustus Bird (1888 - 1963) was an American journalist, now remembered for his hobby, the Three Mountains Press, a small press he ran while in Paris in the 1920s for the Consolidated Press Association. ...

Others

Although London and Paris were key centres of activity for English-language modernists, much important activity took place elsewhere. When Mina Loy moved to New York in 1916, she became part of a circle of writers involved with Others: A Magazine of the New Verse which included William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore, among others. This magazine, which ran from 1915 to 1919, was edited by Alfred Kreymborg. Contributors also included Pound, Eliot, H.D., Djuna Barnes, Amy Lowell, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg and Wallace Stevens. Alfred Francis Kreymborg (1883–1966) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, literary editor and anthologist. ... Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, born in Savannah, Georgia, whose work includes poetry, short stories and novels. ... Carl Sandburg in 1955 Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer and folklorist. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist poet. ...

Marianne Moore photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948

The U.S. modernist poets were concerned to create work in a distinctively American idiom. Williams, a doctor who worked in general practice in a working-class area of Rutherford, New Jersey, explained this approach by saying that he made his poems from 'the speech of Polish mothers'. In this, they were placing themselves in a tradition stretching back to Whitman. Image File history File links Marianne_Moore_1948. ... Image File history File links Marianne_Moore_1948. ... Map highlighting Rutherfords location within Bergen County. ...

After her initial association with the Imagists, Marianne Moore carved out a unique niche for herself among 20th century poets. Much of her poetry is written in syllabic verse, repeating the number of syllables rather than stresses or beats, per line. She also experimented with stanza forms borrowed from troubadour poetry. Syllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed number of syllables per line or stanza regardless of the number of stresses that are present. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. ...

Wallace Stevens' work falls somewhat outside this mainstream of modernism. Indeed, he deprecated the work of both Eliot and Pound as "mannered." His poetry is a complex exploration of the relationship between imagination and reality. Unlike many other modernists, but like the English Romantics, by whom he was influenced, Stevens thought that poetry was what all humans did; the poet was merely self-conscious about the activity. Imagination is, in general, the power or process of producing mental images and ideas. ... This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. ... Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ... The Anxiety of Influence is a book published in 1973 by Harold Bloom. ...

In Scotland, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid formed something of a one-man modernist movement. An admirer of Joyce and Pound, MacDiarmid wrote much of his early poetry in anglicised Lowland Scots, a literary dialect which had also been used by Robert Burns. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I and was invalided out in 1918. After the war, he set up a literary magazine, Scottish Chapbook, with 'Not traditions - Precedents!' as its motto. His later work reflected an increasing interest in found poetry and other formal innovations. Motto: (Latin for No one provokes me with impunity)1 Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow Official language(s) English, Gaelic, Scots 2 Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair MP  - First Minister Jack McConnell MSP Unification    - by Kenneth I... Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve (August 11, 1892, Langholm - September 9, 1978), perhaps the most important Scottish poet of the 20th century. ... Scots refers to the Anglic varieties spoken in parts of Scotland. ... Robert Burns (January 25, 1759 – July 21, 1796) was a poet and a lyricist. ... The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in war and in peace. ... Found poetry is the rearrangement of words or phrases that are taken (sometimes randomly) from other sources (example: clipped newspaper headlines, bits of advertising copy, handwritten cards pulled from a hat) in a manner that gives the rearranged words a completely new meaning. ...

Wallace Stevens' Of Modern Poetry

Wallace Stevens' essential modernist poem, Of Modern Poetry sounds as if the verbs are left out. The verb 'to be' is omitted from the first and final lines. The poem itself opens and closes with the act of finding. The poem and the mind become synonymous: a collapse between the poem, the act, and the mind. During the poem the dyad becomes further collapsed into one: a spatial and a temporal collapse between the subject and the object; form and content equal each other; form becomes not simply expressive of, but constitutive of. The poem goes from being a static object to being an action. The poem of the mind has to be alternative and listening; it is experimental. The poem resists and refuses transcendentalism, but remains within the conceptual limits of the mind and the poem. Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist poet. ... Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early-to mid-19th century. ...

The Waste Land as example of a Modernist Text

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land was a foundational text of Modernism. It represented the moment in which imagism moved in to Modernism proper. It is a text in which broken, fragmented, and seemingly unrelated images come together. It is an anti-narrative and is disjunctive. The metaphor of seeing and vision is central to the poem. This was central to Modernism. We, as readers, are in confusion, we have an inability to see anything except a heap of broken images. However, the narrator (in The Waste Land as well as other texts) promised to show the reader a different meaning; to show the reader how to make meaning from dislocation and from fragments. This construction of an exclusive meaning was essential to Modernism. Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... T. S. Eliot (by E. O. Hoppe, 1919) The Waste Land (sometimes mistakenly written as The Wasteland) is a highly influential 433-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot. ... Ezra Pound, one of the prime movers of Imagism. ...

Maturity

With the publication of The Waste Land, modernist poetry appeared to have made a breakthrough into wider critical discourse and a broader readership. However, the economic collapse of the late 1920s and early 1930s had a serious negative impact on the new writing. For American writers, living in Europe became more difficult as their incomes lost a great deal of their relative value. While Stein, Barney and Joyce remained in the French city, much of the scene they had presided over scattered. Pound was in Italy, Eliot in London, H.D. moved between that city and Switzerland, and many of the other writers associated with the movement were now living in the States.

The economic depression, combined with the impact of the Spanish Civil War, also saw the emergence, in the Britain of the 1930s, of a more overtly political poetry, as represented by such writers as W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender. Although nominally admirers of Eliot, these poets tended towards a poetry of radical content but formal conservativeness. For example, they rarely wrote free verse, preferring rhyme and regular stanza patterns in much of their work. Combatants Spanish Republic Soviet Union Nationalist Spain Italy Germany Commanders Manuel Azaña Francisco Largo Caballero Juan Negrín Francisco Franco Casualties Hundreds of thousands The Spanish Civil War, which lasted from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, was a conflict in which the Francoists or Nationalists, led by... Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was an English poet. ... Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE, (February 28, 1909 – July 16, 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. ...

1930s modernism

Consequently, modernism in English remained in the role of an avant garde movement, depending on little presses and magazines and a small but dedicated readership. The key group to emerge during this time were the Objectivist poets, consisting of Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi, Basil Bunting and Lorine Niedecker. The Objectiveists were admirers of Stein, Pound and Williams and Pound actively promoted their work. Thanks to his influence, Zukofsky was asked to edit a special Objectivist issue of the Chicago-based journal Poetry in 1931 to launch the group. The basic tenets of Objectivist poetics were to treat the poem as an object and to emphasise sincerity, intelligence, and the poet's ability to look clearly at the world, and in this they can be viewed as direct descendants of the Imagists. Continuing a tradition established in Paris, Zukofsky, Reznikoff, and Oppen went on to form the Objectivist Press to publish books by themselves and by Williams. In his later work, Zukofsky developed his view of the poem as object to include experimenting with mathematical models for creating poems, producing effects similar to the creation of a Bach fugue or a piece of serial music. William Carlos Williams, who was the only poet to be published as both an Objectivist and an Imagist The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. ... The cover of the 1978 edition of Zukofskys long poem A. Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 - May 12, 1978) was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets. ... George Oppen, a picture now used as the cover for the recently published Selected Poems George Oppen (April 24, 1908 - July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. ... Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 - January 22, 1976) was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. ... Carl Rakosi (November 6, 1903 – June 24, 2004) was the last surviving member of the Objectivist poets. ... Basil Cheesman Bunting (March 3, 1900 – 1985) was a British modernist poet. ... Lorine Niedecker (May 12, 1903 - December 31, 1970) was born on the Black Hawk Island near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. ... Poetry, published in Chicago, Illinois, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. ... The 1748 Haussmann portrait of the composer Bach redirects here. ... In music, a fugue (IPA: ) is a type of contrapuntal composition. ... Serialism is a rigorous system of composing music in which various elements of the piece are ordered according to a pre-determined ordered set or sets, and variations on them. ...

A number of Irish poets and writers moved to Paris in the early 1930s to join the circle around James Joyce. These included Samuel Beckett, Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey and Denis Devlin. These writers were aware of Pound and Eliot, but they were also francophone and took an interest in contemporary French poetry, especially the surrealists. Indeed, Coffey and Devlin were amongst the first to translate the works of Paul Eluard into English. Around the same time, a number of British surrealist poets were beginning to emerge, among them David Gascoyne, George Barker and Hugh Sykes Davies. Like the Objectivists, these poets were relatively neglected by their native literary cultures and had to wait for a revival of interest in British and Irish modernism in the 1960s before their contributions to the development of this alternative tradition were properly assessed. Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet. ... This article is about the poet, also spelled McGreevy. For the Canadian politician, see Thomas McGreevy. ... Brian Coffey (June 8, 1905 - April 14, 1995) was an Irish poet and publisher. ... Denis Devlin (April 15, 1908 - August 21, 1959) was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. ... French poetry is a category of French literature. ... Surrealism is an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious. ... Paul Éluard was the nom de plume of Eugène Grindel (December 14, 1895 - November 18, 1952), a French poet. ... The cover of Gascoynes 1935 book A Short Survey of Surrealism David Gascoyne (October 10, 1916 - November 25, 2001) was a British poet associated with the Surrealist movement. ... See George Barker for other notable people with the same name. ... Hugh Sykes Davies (1909-1984) was an English poet, novelist and communist who was one of a small group of 1930s British surrealists. ...

Long poems

Pound's Homage to Sextus Propertius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and Eliot's The Waste Land marked a transition from the short imagistic poems that were typical of earlier modernist writing towards the writing of longer poems or poem-sequences. A number of long poems were also written during the 1920s, including Mina Loy's 'auto-mythology', Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose and Hugh MacDiarmid's satire on Scottish society, A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle. MacDiarmid wrote a number of long poems, including On a Raised Beach, Three Hymns to Lenin and In Memoriam James Joyce, in which he incorporated materials from science, linguistics, history and even found poems based on texts from the Times Literary Supplement. David Jones' war poem In Parenthesis was a book-length work that drew on the matter of Britain to illuminate his experiences in the trenches, and his later epic The Anathemata, itself hewn from a much longer manuscript, is a meditation on empire and resistance, the local and the global, which uses materials from Christian, Roman and Celtic history and mythology. Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language. ... HIStory: Past, Present and Future – Book I is a two-disc album by Michael Jackson released in 1995 by the Epic Records division of Sony BMG. The first disc (HIStory Begins) is a fifteen-track greatest hits (later released as Greatest Hits - HIStory Volume I), while the second disc (HIStory... The Times Literary Supplement (or TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. ... The Arthurian legend or the Matter of Britain is a name given collectively to the legends that concern the Celtic and legendary history of the British Isles, especially those focused on King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Christianity. ... The Roman Forum was the central area around which ancient Rome developed. ... Celts redirects here. ...

One of the most influential of all the modernist long poems was Pound's The Cantos, a 'poem containing history' that he started in 1915 and continued to work on for the rest of his writing life. From a starting point that combines Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Divine Comedy to create a personal epic of 20th century life, the poem uses materials from history, politics, literature, art, music, economics, philosophy, mythology, ecology and the poet's personal experiences and ranges across European, American, African and Asian cultures. Pound coined the term 'ideogrammatic method' to describe his technique of placing these materials in relation to each other so as to open up new and unexpected relationships. This can be seen as paralleling techniques used by modernist artists and composers to similar ends. Ezra Pound in 1913 The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. ... Homer (Greek: , Hómēros) was a legendary early Greek poet and aoidos (singer) traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... HIStory: Past, Present and Future – Book I is a two-disc album by Michael Jackson released in 1995 by the Epic Records division of Sony BMG. The first disc (HIStory Begins) is a fifteen-track greatest hits (later released as Greatest Hits - HIStory Volume I), while the second disc (HIStory... Politics is the process by which groups make decisions. ... Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... Allegory of Music on the Opéra Garnier Music is an art form that involves organized and audible sounds and silence. ... Face-to-face trading interactions on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of valuable goods and services. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... // For the Derek Sherinian album, see Mythology (Derek Sherinian album). ... Ernst Haeckel coined the term oekologie in 1866. ... This article is about the continent. ... World map showing location of Africa A satellite composite image of Africa Africa is the worlds second_largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Asian people. ... Composers are people who write music. ...

Other Imagist-associated poets also went on to write long poems. William Carlos Williams' Paterson applied the techniques developed by Pound to a specific location and in a specific, American, dialect. H.D. wrote Trilogy out of her experiences in London during World War II and Helen in Egypt, a reworking of the Helen of Troy story from the perspective of the female protagonist, as a kind of feminist response to the masculine mind-set behind Pound's epic. Eliot's experiences of war-torn London also underpinned his Four Quartets. A number of Objectivists also wrote long poems, including Zukofsky's A, Charles Reznikoff's Testimony, and Basil Bunting's Briggflatts. Brian Coffey's Advent is the key long poem by an Irish modernist. All these poems, to one extent or another, use a range of techniques to blend personal experience with materials from a wide range of cultural and intellectual activities to create collage-like texts on an epic scale. Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom France Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Charles de Gaulle Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian... Helen was the wife of Menelaus and reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. ... Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ... Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T. S. Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943 (ISBN 0156332256). ... Briggflatts is a long poem by Basil Bunting. ...

Politics

Poetic modernism was an overtly revolutionary literary movement, a 'revolution of the word', and, for a number of its practitioners, this interest in radical change spilled over into politics. A number of the leading early modernists became known for their right-wing views; these included Eliot, who once described himself as a Royalist, Stein, who supported the Vichy government for a time at least, and, most notoriously, Pound, who, after moving to Italy in the early 1930s, openly admired Mussolini and began to include anti-Semitic sentiments in his writings. He was arrested towards the end of World War II on charges of treason arising out of broadcasts he made on Italian radio during the war but never faced trial because of his mental health. Both Stein and Pound traced their political beliefs back to the American Republican tradition. Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy. ... Vichy France (French: now called Régime de Vichy or Vichy; called itself at the time État Français, or French State) was the French state of 1940-1944 which was a puppet government under Nazi influence, as opposed to the Free French Forces, based first in London and later... Benito Mussolini created a fascist state through the use of propaganda, total control of the media and disassembly of the working democratic government. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Federal courts Supreme Court Chief Justice Associate Justices Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures State Courts Counties, Cities, and Towns Other countries Politics Portal      For other uses, see Republican Party (disambiguation) or GOP (disambiguation). ...

A number of leading modernists took a more left-wing political view. Hugh MacDiarmid helped found the National Party of Scotland and was also a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. During the 1930s, he was expelled from the former for being a communist and from the latter for being a nationalist although he rejoined the Communist Party in 1956. The Objectivists Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen and Carl Rakosi were all, at one time or another, committed Marxists and Oppen spent a number of years in Mexico to escape the attention of Joseph McCarthy's Senate committee. A number of the British surrealists, especially David Gascoyne, also supported Communism. The National Party of Scotland (NPS) was formed in 1928 after John MacCormick of the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association (GUSNA) called a meeting of all those favouring the establishment of a party favouring Scottish independence. ... The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist party in the United Kingdom. ... George Oppen, a picture now used as the cover for the recently published Selected Poems George Oppen (April 24, 1908 - July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. ... Carl Rakosi (November 6, 1903 – June 24, 2004) was the last surviving member of the Objectivist poets. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. ... A senate is a deliberative body, often the upper house or chamber of a legislature. ... The cover of Gascoynes 1935 book A Short Survey of Surrealism David Gascoyne (October 10, 1916 - November 25, 2001) was a British poet associated with the Surrealist movement. ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ...

Other modernists took up political positions that did not fit neatly into the left/right model. H.D., Mina Loy and Nathalie Barney, for instance, are now seen as proto-feminists and their openness about their various sexualities can be read as foreshadowing the 1970s view that the personal is political. H.D., especially after World War I, came to view the goal of modernism as being the bringing about of world peace. However, she also displayed anti-Semitic views in the notebooks for her book Tribute to Freud. Basil Bunting, who came from a Quaker background, was a conscientious objector during World War I, but because of his opposition to Fascism, served in British Military Intelligence in Persia (Iran) during World War II. William Carlos Williams' political views arose from his daily contact with the poor who attended his surgery. He was another for whom the personal and political blended, an approach best summed up in his statement that 'A new world is only a new mind'. Basil Cheesman Bunting (March 3, 1900 – 1985) was a British modernist poet. ... The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, or Friends, is a religious community founded in England in the 17th century. ... A conscientious objector (CO) is an individual following the religious, moral or ethical dictates of his or her conscience that are incompatible with being a combatant in military service, or being part of the armed forces as a combatant organization. ... Fascism (IPA: ) is a political ideology and mass movement that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. ... Motto: de facto: Esteqlāl, āzādÄ«, jomhÅ«rÄ«-ye eslāmÄ«[1]   (Persian for Independence, freedom, (the) Islamic Republicde jure: Allaho Akbar (Arabic for God is Great)[2] Anthem: SorÅ«d-e MellÄ«-e Īrān Capital (and largest city) Tehran Official languages Persian Government Islamic Republic  - Supreme...

As can be seen from this brief survey, although many modernist poets were politically engaged, there is no single political position that can be said to be closely allied to the modernist movement in English-language poetry. These poets came from a wide range of backgrounds and had a wide range of personal experiences and their political stances reflect these facts.

Legacy

The modernist 'revolution of the word' was not universally welcomed, either by readers or writers. Certainly by the 1930s, a new generation of poets had emerged who looked to more formally conservative poets like Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats as models and these writers struck a chord with a readership who were uncomfortable with the experimentation and uncertainty preferred by the modernists. Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) — an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement — delineated characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. ... A 1907 engraving of Yeats. ...

However, the 1950s saw the emergence, particularly in the United States, of a new generation of poets who looked to the modernists for inspiration. The influence of modernism can be seen in these poetic groups and movements, especially those associated with the San Francisco Renaissance, such as the Beat generation, the Black Mountain poets, the deep image group. Charles Olson, the theorist of the Black Mountain group, wrote in his 1950 essay, Projectivist Verse 'ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION', a statement that links back directly to the Imagists. Robert Duncan, another Black Mountain poet admired H.D. while a third member of the group, Robert Creeley did much to help revive interest in Zukofsky and other Objectivists. The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centred around that city and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. ... The Beat Generation was a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. ... The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called the Projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered around Black Mountain College. ... Deep image is a term coined by Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly in the second issue of Trobar, and was used to describe poetry written by him and by Robert Kelly, Diane Wakoski and Clayton Eshleman. ... Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was an important 2nd generation American modernist poet who was a crucial link between earlier figures like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, a rubric which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat... Robert Duncan may refer to: Robert Duncan (1919-1988), U.S. poet Robert Duncan, U.S. physicist Robert Duncan, British TV comedy actor Robert Duncan McNeill, U.S. actor, director and producer Robert Duncan, Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other... Robert Creeley (May 21, 1926 - March 30, 2005) was an American poet, author of more than sixty books, and usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that schools. ...

Among the Beats, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg studied Pound closely and were heavily influenced by his interest in Chinese and Japanese poetry and the ecological concerns evident in the later Cantos. William Carlos Williams was another who had a strong impact on the Beat poets, encouraging poets like Lew Welch and writing an introduction for the book publication of Ginsberg's seminal poem, Howl. Many of these writers found a major platform for their work in Cid Corman's Origin magazine and press. Origin also published work by Louis Zukofsky, Lorine Niedecker and Wallace Stevens, helping to revive interest in these early modernist writers. The Objectivists, especially the strict formal experimentation of Zukofsky's later works, were also formative for the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. Young Gary Snyder, on one of his early book covers Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet (originally, often associated with the Beat Generation), essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. ... Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet. ... Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Cid Corman (1924 - March 12, 2004) was an American poet, translator and editor who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century. ... The Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, after the magazine that bears that name) are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s; its central figures are all actively writing, teaching, and performing...

As the Beats and other American poets began to find readers in the UK and Ireland, a new generation of British poets with an interest in modernist experimentation began to appear. These poets, who included Roy Fisher, Tom Raworth, Bob Cobbing, Gael Fisher and others formed the nucleus of the British Poetry Revival. This new generation helped bring about a renewed interest in the writings of Bunting, MacDiarmid, David Jones and David Gascoyne. Roy Fisher (born 1930) is a British poet and jazz pianist. ... Tom Raworth (Thomas Moore Raworth) (born 1938) is a London-born poet and visual artist who has published over 40 books of poetry and prose since 1966. ... Bob Cobbing (July 30, 1920 - September 29, 2002) was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival. ... The British Poetry Revival is the general name given to a loose poetic movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. ...

Contemporary poets associated with Irish modernism include those associated with New Writers Press and The Beau magazine; these include Trevor Joyce, Michael Smith, Geoffrey Squires, Randolph Healy, and Maurice Scully. New Writers Press also published work by Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey and Denis Devlin, introducing them to a new audience, and, in Coffey's case, facilitating a late flowering of new work. New Writers Press is an Irish small press that specialises in poetry publishing. ... The Beau was an annual literary journal edited by Maurice Scully. ... Trevor Joyce (born October 26, 1947) is an Irish poet, born in Dublin. ... Michael Smith (born 1942) is an Irish poet, author and translator. ... Geoffrey Squires (born 1942) is an Irish poet who works in what might loosely be termed the modernist tradition. ... Randolph Healy (born 1956) is an Irish poet and publisher. ... Maurice Scully (born 1952) is an Irish poet and editor who works in what might be termed the modernist tradition. ...

See also

• Modernism
• List of English-language first and second generation modernist writers
• Post-modernism
• Scottish Renaissance

Modernism is a trend of thought which affirms the power of human beings to make, improve, deconstruct and reshape their built and designed environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. ... List of English-language first and second generation modernist writers Richard Aldington Djuna Barnes Samuel Beckett Kay Boyle Basil Bunting Brian Coffey E. E. Cummings Denis Devlin John Dos Passos T. S. Eliot William Faulkner F. S. Flint Ford Madox Ford H.D. David Jones James Joyce Wyndham Lewis Amy... Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated pomo) is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ... The Scottish version of modernism, the Scottish literary renaissance was begun by Hugh MacDiarmid in the 1920s when he abandoned his English language poetry and began to write in Lallans. ...

References

Print

• Coughlan, Patricia & Davis, Alec eds. Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s (Cork University Press, 1995) ISBN 1-85918-061-2
• Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World. (Collins, 1985) ISBN 0-385-13129-1
• Jones, Peter (ed.). Imagist Poetry (Penguin, 1972).
• Kenner, Hugh. The Pound Era. (Faber & Faber, 1973).
• Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy. (Northwestern University Press, 1999). ISBN 0-8101-1764-9
• Redman, Tim. Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Hugh Kenner (January 7, 1923 – November 24, 2003), Canadian literary scholar, critic, & professor. ...

External links

• Expatriate Literary Circle Magazine designed to bring together a group of intellects looking to share good classic reads and stimulating discussions. The website has been set-up to simulate the same Parisian cafe atmosphere of the 1920's as experienced by E. E. Cummings, Hemingway and their fellow Expats.
• Modern American Poetry Captured November 18, 2004.
• Modernism Web site Captured November 18, 2004.
• Imagists.org Captured November 18, 2004.
• The Objectivist Timeline Project Captured November 24, 2004.
• The Electronic Poetry Center Captured November 24, 2004.
• Modern Poetry Captured June 23, 2005 Includes audio discussion of major modern poets