MODERNIST POETRY AND

THE CONTEMPORARY
SCENE

Overview
Modernism is where we are now, broadly
speaking, if we include Postmodernism
and experimental poetry. Modernist
poetry is the poetry written in schools
and poetry workshops, published by thousands of
small presses, and reviewed by serious newspapers
and literary journals — a highbrow, coterie poetry
that isn't popular and doesn't profess to be. To its
devotees, Modernist styles are the only way of
dealing with contemporary matters, and they do
not see them as a specialized development of
traditional poetry, small elements being pushed in
unusual directions, and sometimes extended
beyond the limits of ready comprehension.

The key elements of Modernist poems are

experimentation, anti-realism, individualism and a
stress on the cerebral rather than emotive aspects.
Previous writing was thought to be stereotyped,
requiring ceaseless experimentation and rejection
of old forms. Poetry should represent itself, or the
writer's inner nature, rather than hold up a mirror
to nature. Indeed the poet's vision was all-
important, however much it cut him off from
society or the scientific concerns of the day. Poets
belonged to an aristocracy of the avant garde, and
cool observation, detachment and avoidance of
simple formulations were essential.
Poststructuralist theories come in many
embodiments, but shared a preoccupation with
language. Reality is not mediated by what we read
or write, but is entirely constituted by those
actions. We don't therefore look at the
world through a poem, and ask how whether the
representation is true or adequate or appropriate,
but focus on the devices and strategies within the
text itself. Modernist theory urged us to overlook
the irrelevancies of author's intention, historical
conventions and social context to assess the
aesthetic unity of the poem. Poststructuralist
criticism discounts any such unity, and urges us to
accept a looser view of art, one that accords more
with everyday realities and shows how language
suppresses alternative views, particularly those of
the socially or politically disadvantaged.

Experimental poetry takes the process further,

taking its inspiration from advertising, and
deploying words as graphic elements.
Modernism has no precise boundaries. At its
strictest, in Anglo-American literature, the period
runs from 1890 to 1920 and includes Joyce, Pound,
Eliot and Wyndham Lewis among many
others. {1} But few of its writers shared common
aims, and the term was applied
retrospectively. {2} Very largely, the themes of
Modernism begin well back in the nineteenth
century, and many do not reach full expression
until the latter half of the twentieth century, so
that Modernism is perhaps better regarded as part
of a broad plexus of concerns which are variably
represented in a hundred and twenty years of
European writing. {3}
Modernism is a useful term because writing in the
period, especially that venerated by academia and
by literary critics, is intellectually challenging,
which makes it suitable for undergraduate
study. {4} Many serious writers come from
university, moreover, and set sail by Modernism's
charts, so that the assumptions need to be
understood to appreciate contemporary work of
any type. {5} And quite different from these is the
growing suspicion that contemporary writing has
lost its way, which suggests that we may see where
alternatives lie if we understand Modernism
better. {6}
Features of Modernism
To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period
exhibits these features:
1. experimentation
belief that previous writing was stereotyped and
inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its
own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual
reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm
2. anti-realism
sacralisation of art, which must represent itself,
not something beyond preference for allusion
(often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and
mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the
conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than
motivations of conventional plot
3. individualism
promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense
of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which
alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science,
economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts:
extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment:
stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde
4. intellectualism
writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more
posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters
detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at
formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself
and not the ostensible referent
The Shock of the New
One feature above all is striking in Modernism:
experimentation, change for the sake of change, a
need to be constantly at the cutting edge in
technique and thought. {7} "Make it new" said
Pound. Perhaps this was understandable in a
society itself changing rapidly. The First World War
shattered many beliefs — in peaceful progress,
international cooperation, the superiority of the
European civilizations. It also outlawed a high-
minded and heroic vocabulary: "gallant, manly,
vanquish, fate", etc. could afterwards only be used
in an ironic or jocular way. {8} But more
fundamental was the nineteenth century growth in
city life, in industrial employment, in universal
literacy, in the power of mass patronage and the
vote. Science and society could evolve and
innovate, so why not art?
Is incessant change to be welcomed, and should art
reflect such change? Perhaps a stronger argument
could be made for stability, some inner anchor of
belief and shared assumptions as society moved
beyond its familiar landmarks. Well known are the
disorientating and debilitating effects of the stress
involved, in animals and humans. {9} Man is above
all a social animal, and it may be that the media
hype and advertising of contemporary life is
purposely shallow to fulfill that need for shared
experience.
In its desire to retain intellectual ascendancy, art
overlooked one crucial distinction. Science tests,
improves and builds, but does not wantonly tear
down. Extensive modification of established
conceptions is difficult, and starting afresh in the
manner of the modernist artist would be
unthinkable. There is simply too much to know and
master, and the scientific community insists on
certain apprenticeships and procedures. Originality
is not prized in the way commonly supposed.
And does art represent its time? Not in any simple
way. Very different artworks may originate in the
same society at the same time — those of Hals and
Rembrandt, for example. Art history naturally
wishes to draw everything into its study but neither
the appearance of great artists nor the direction of
artistic trends seems predictable, any more than
history is, and for similar reasons. Everything
depends on the starting assumptions: what counts
as important, and how that is assessed. Much the
same can be said of economic theory. {10} The
necessary are not the sufficient causes: certain
factors may need to be present but they are not
themselves sufficient to effect change.

The Always Unconventional

No less than other practices, art begets art, with
sometimes only a nodding acquaintance with the
larger world it purports to represent or serve. Much
writing and painting from the early nineteenth-
century days of Romanticism was frankly escapist,
preferring the solitude of nature or the inner world
of contemplation to the mundane business of
socializing and earning a living. No doubt the
shallow optimism, humbug and economic
exploitation of the industrial revolution was very
unattractive, but so then was rural poverty.
Excepting the Georgians and some of the Auden
generation, few poets of the last hundred years had
first hand experience of the social issues of the
day, and there are large areas of contemporary life
even now that are not squarely treated: the world
of work, public service, cultural differences, sexual
experience. Either the literary prototypes do not
exist, or writers would have to give up an
individualist viewpoint and "dig out the facts" — i.e.
write something closer to journalism. {11}

The Ever Individual

But the burning issues of the day pass and are soon
forgotten. Art prides itself on its more fundamental
qualities. If they did not have the time, training or
intellectual powers to understand the
contemporary world, artists would look for some
shorter path to their subject matter. Hence the
championing of the artist's viewpoint, on a vision
unmediated by social understanding. Hence the
appeal to (if not the understanding of
) psychiatry, mythology and linguistics to assert
that artistic creations do not represent reality but
in some sense embody reality. Poems should not
express anything but themselves. They should
simply be. {12}
Many techniques were used to distance language
from its common uses, and assert its primary, self-
validating status. And since proficiency in science
and business requires a long, practical training,
literature also insisted on study courses: a good
deal needs to be swallowed before the student's
eyes are opened to the possible excellences of
contemporary writing. Maybe these are invisible to
the general public, or even to rival sects, but that
is not a drawback. Art is not for the profane
majority, and its boundaries are carefully
patrolled. Art may employ populist material or
techniques, but it cannot be populist itself. Art is
outspokenly useless.

All this comes at a cost. Writers in a free society

may surely please themselves, securing what public
they can, but there is something curious, if not
perverse, in making work opaque with private
allusion, obscure mythology, and misunderstood
scraps of philosophy, and in the same breath
complaining that the work does not sell.
Professional writing is a very hard business, and
even the moderately successful novelist needs to
turn out a supplementary one or two thousand
words per week as journalist or reviewer. The
founders of Modernism had small private incomes,
found patrons or begged. Dedicated writers today
resort to part-time employment that is not too
physically or mentally demanding, but the
restricting viewpoints can be to their own and
society's disadvantage.

Elitist Intellectualism
But Modernist writers and their commentators do
not regard the narrowly individual outlook a
shortcoming, quite the opposite. Nineteenth-
century realism was tainted with commerce and
the circulating libraries. Twentieth-century realism
all too blatantly takes the form of TV soaps and
blockbuster novels. God forbid that the modern
writer should obey the first tenet of art, and
portray something of the world in clearer and more
generous contours. That would mean actually
experiencing the hard world as it is for most of its
inhabitants, of living like everybody else.
The intellect has its demands and pleasures, but
the Modernists do not generally live such a life,
which requires university tenure or independent
wealth. Their learning tends to be fragmentary,
with ideas serving ulterior purposes, one of which is
social distinction. There is a persistent strain of
intellectual snobbery in Modernism — sometimes
breaking out in racism and contempt for the
masses, sometimes retreating to arcane philosophy:
idealism, existentialism,
Poststructuralism. {13} Modernists are an
aristocracy of the intellect. The cerebral is
preferred. Modern dramatists and novelists may
appeal to mythology, but their understanding is
intellectualized: work is not crafted to evoke the
primal forces unleashed in plays by Euripides or
Racine, but shaped by concepts that serve for plot
and structure.

Representatives
Poets belonging to the 'high Modernist' phase
include:
Ezra Pound: e.g. Hugh Selwyn Mauberly {14}
T.S. Eliot: e.g. Waste Land {15}
Wallace Stevens: e.g. Thirteen Ways of Looking at
a Blackbird {16}

Conclusions
Modernism evolved by various routes. From
Symbolism it took allusiveness in style and an
interest in rarefied mental states. From Realism it
borrowed an urban setting, and a willingness to
break taboos. And from Romanticism came an
artist-centred view, and retreat into irrationalism
and hallucinations. Even its founding fathers did
not long remain Modernists. Pound espoused
doctrinaire right-wing views. Eliot became a
religious convert. Joyce's late work verged on the
surrealistic. Lewis quarrelled with everyone.
No one would willingly lose the best that has been
written in the last hundred years, but earlier
doubts are coming home to roost. Modernism's
ruthless self-promotion creates intellectual castes
that cut themselves off from the hopes and joys of
everyday life. The poetry can be built on the
flimsiest of
foundations: Freudian psychiatry, verbal
cleverness, individualism run riot, anti-realism,
over-emphasis on the irrational. The concepts
themselves are fraudulent, and the supporting
myths too small and self-admiring to show man in
his fullest nature. Sales of early Modernist works
were laughably small, and it was largely after the
Second World War, when the disciples of
Modernism rose to positions of influence in the
academic and publishing worlds, that Modernism
came the lingua franca of the educated classes.
The older generation of readers gradually died out.
Literature for them was connoisseurship, a lifetime
of deepening familiarity with authors who couldn't
be analyzed in critical theory, or packed into
three-year undergraduate courses.

References
1. Julian Symons's Makers of the New: The
Revolution in Literature 1912-39. (1987), Chapter 1
of Douwe Fokkem and Elrud Ibsch's Modernist
Conjectures: A Mainstream in European Literature
1910-1940 (1987), and Vicki Mahaffey's Modernist
Theory and Criticismentry in Michael Groden and
Martin Kreiswirth's The Johns Hopkins Guide to
Literary Theory and Criticism (1994).
2. Harry Levin's What Was
Modernism? in Refractions: Essays in Comparative
Literature (1966).
3. Alistair Davies's An Annotated Critical
Bibliography of Modernism (1982).
4. John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses:
Pride and Prejudice among the Literary
Intelligentsia, 1880-1930 (1992), and Barry
Appleyard's The Pleasures of Peace: Art and
Imagination in Post-war Britain. (1989).
5. David Lodge's Language of Fiction: Essays in
Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English
Novel (1966), and D.J. Taylor's A Vain Conceit:
British Fiction in the 1980's (1989).
6. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures: Modern
Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter (1990), Dana
Gioa's Can Poetry Matter: Essays on Poetry and
American Culture (1992), and Wendell
Harris's Literary Meaning (1996).
7. R. Poggioli's The Theory of the Avant-
Garde. (1968)
8. Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern
History (1975).
9. See the large literature on stress, both academic
and popular accounts.
10. Gertrude Himmelfarb's The New History and the
Old (1987) and Guy Routh's The Origin of Economic
Ideas (1977).
11. Chapters 1 and 2 of A.T. Tolley's The Poetry of
the Forties (1985).
12. M.H. Abrams' Poetry, Theories of entry in Alex
Preminger's (Ed.) The Princeton Handbook of Poetic
Terms (1974).
13. Carey 1992, and Paul
Johnson's Intellectuals (1988).
14. Ezra Pound. Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part
I) http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/p
ound/pound.htm. Bibliography, short articles and
some poems of 1920 and before.
15. T.S. Eliot. The Waste
Land. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_La
nd Short article, with links to the poem text, etc.
16. Wallace Stevens. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID
/124. Biography, bibliography, links and nine
poems.
 Internet Resources
1. Modernism. Holly
Ashkannejhad. http://www.class.uidaho.edu/eng2
58_1/modernists/homepage1.htm. Illustrated guide
to accompany freshman course.
2. Modernism. Jan
2004. http://nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Mod
ernism. Nationmaster Encyclopedia entry.
3. American Modernist Poetry.
38. http://www.utoledo.edu/library/canaday/Mod
ernist.html. Notes and a listing of material at the
University of Toledo.
4. Modernism in Literature.
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Periods_and_Mov
ements/Modernism/. Open Directory's short listing
of sites. NNA
5. Modernism. http://vos.ucsb.edu. Voice of the
Shuttle listings.
6. Bohemian
Ink. http://www.levity.com/corduroy/index.htm.
Useful listings for key figures.
7. Perspectives in American Literature. Chapter 7:
Early Twentieth Century - American Modernism: A
Brief Introduction. Paul P. Reuben. Jan. 2003.
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap
7/7intro.html. Useful notes.
8. Book Reviews: 21st-Century Modernism and With
Strings. Yunte Huang.
2002. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.3/huang
.html. Review of books by Perloff and Bernstein.
9. Pound: On Canto IX. Lawrence S. Rainey et
al. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/
pound/canto9.htm. Analysis of modernist
techniques, by several critics.
10. American modern
poetry. http://www.findarticles.com. Many
articles on American and modernist poets.
11. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-
garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Matei
Calinescu.
1987. http://www.duke.edu/~aparks/Calin1g.html
. Summary of Calinescu's 1987 book.
12. Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Kristi
Siegel. Jan.
2003. http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm.
Introductions and selected listings.
13. Dana Gioia Online.
http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecpm.htm.
Articles on poetry and twentieth century literary
figures.
14. Shrink-Rapt Poetry? Dean Blehert. Apr.
2002. http://www.blehert.com/essays/shrink.html
. New York Quarterly essay on relationship of
modern poetry to psychiatry.
15. Modern American Poetry Criticism. Timothy
Materer. 1994.
http://www.missouri.edu/~engtim/ALS94.html
NNA. Reviews of 1994 critical articles.
16. Modernism Links. Nancy Knowles. 2002.
http://www2.eou.edu/~nknowles/winter2002/engl
322links.html NNA. Good selection.
17. Guide to Literary Theory. Michael Groden and
Martin
Kreiswirth. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/guide
/. Johns Hopkins online guide: free access limited.
18. Literary
Criticism. http://www.libraryspot.com/litcrit.htm.
Library Spot's listing.
19. Comparative Literature and Theory. Stephen
Hock and Mark Sample . Jun.
2003. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/Complit/Eclat/.
Essential listings.
20. Literary Resources on the Net. Jack Lynch. Jun.
2003.
'shttp://andromeda.rutgers.edu/%7Ejlynch/Lit/.
Extensive as usual.
21. KWSnet Web Resources. Kirk W. Smith. Jan.
2004. http://www.kwsnet.com/litstudi.html.
Excellent directory of literature sources.
22. Internet Public Library. Jun.
2002. http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/. Listing of
critical and biographical websites.
23. Voice of the Shuttle. Alan Liu et
al. http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2718.
Literary theory section.
24. Literary Criticism and Biographies.
http://library.hilton.kzn.school.za/English/litcrit.h
tm NNA. Short but useful directory.
25. English Literature on the Web. Mitsuharu
Matsuoka. http://www.lang.nagoya-
u.ac.jp/%7Ematsuoka/EngLit.html. Very extensive
listings.
26. Literature Webliography. Mike Russo. Jul.
2003. http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/lit/lit.html.
LSU Libraries useful listings.
27. Literary Periods: Modern: 1900 to
1945. http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/p
eriods/modern.htm. Useful listing of sites.
28. Modernism and the Modern Novel. Christopher
Keep, Tim McLaughlin and Robin Parmar.
2000. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/elab/hfl
0255.html. Brief articles but good bibliography.
29. Modernist Poetry. Jun.
2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernist_poe
try. Short articles with extensive lists.
30. Dana Levin, Make It New: Originality and the
Younger
Poet. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmM
ID/5893. Short article and links to featured poets.

C. John Holcombe | About the Author |

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