Ezra Pound

(1885-1972)
The poet most responsible
for defining and promoting a
modernist aesthetic in
poetry.

Biographical Facts
born in Idaho.
US.
educated mainly
in Pennsylvania
Living in London,
Paris, and Rapallo.
Died in Venice,
Italy.

Life Experience
involved in Fascist politics
return to the United States until 1945
arrested on charges of treason for
broadcasting Fascist propaganda by radio
to the United States during the Second
World War.
was acquitted in 1946, but declared
mentally ill and committed to St.
Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Life Experience
Won Bollingen-Library of Congress
Award for the Pisan Cantos (1948).
Won his release from the hospital in
1958.
Returned to Italy and settled in
Venice.
Died in 1972.

Contribution to Literature
Launching Imagism, a movement in
poetry which derived its technique
from classical Chinese and Japanese
poetry--stressing clarity, precision,
and economy of language

His Literary Influence

He advanced the work of major
contemporaries, such as
W.B.Yeats, Robert Frost, William
Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore,
H.D., James Joyce, Ernest
Hemingway, and especially
T.S.Eliot.

Major Works

The Cantos
(the encyclopedic epic
poem)
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
The Pisan Cantos

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these

faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black
bough.

Wallace Stevens
(1879-1955)
One of the most
significant
American poets of
the 20th century

Biographical Information
born in Pennsylvania, son of a prosperous
country lawyer,
enrolled in 1893 at Harvard College, began
writing poems and plays,
leaving Harvard without degree in 1900,
entered New York Law School, graduated in
1903, and was admitted to the bar next year,
named a vice president of an insurance
company in 1934.

Literary Career
Influenced by imagism and French symbolism,
he wrote poems while working as a
businessman.
published his first collection of verse,
HARMONIUM (1923), at the age of forty-four,
From the early 1940s he entered a period of
creativity that continued until his death.
He turned gradually away from the playful use of
language to a more reflective, though abstract
style.

Important points
His work as a corporate lawyer did not much
affect his role a lyric poet
Stevens managed to balance between the
pressure of numbers and calculations and
the poetic imagination,
In 1946 Stevens was elected to the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, in 1950 he
received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, and in
1955 he was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize
and the National Book Award.

William Carlos Williams

1883-1963
American Author
and Physician

Biographical Facts
born in New Jersey, U.S. 1883.
received his M.D. from the
University of Pennsylvania
sustained his medical practice
throughout his life
Died in Vienna, Austria, 1963.

Literary Career
met and befriended Ezra Pound
one of the principal poets of the
Imagist movement
subject matter was centered on
the everyday circumstances of
life and the lives of common
people.

Poetic Features
Relaxed colloquialism
Vivid Presentation
Eloquent passages of
beautifully controlled rhythm
and phrasing

Robert Frost
(1874 - 1963)
The most popular 20th
Century American Poet,
A four-time winner of the
Pulitzer Prize.

Biographical Information
Born in San Francisco in 1874, died in Boston
in 1963.
After his father's death in 1885, young Frost
left California with his family and settled in
Massachusetts.
Attended high school in Mass., entered
Dartmouth College, but remained less than
one semester.

Map of the United States

Biographical Information
Did odd jobs: teaching school and working
in a mill and as a newspaper reporter.
Attended Harvard College as a special
student but left without a degree.
Over the next ten years he wrote (but
rarely published) poems, operated a farm in
Derry, New Hampshire, and supplemented
his income by teaching at Derry's Pinkerton
Academy.

Literary Career
At 38, he sold the farm and took his family to
England.
In England, his efforts to establish himself as
a poet was almost immediately successful. A
Boy's Will was published 1913, followed a
year later by North of Boston.
Favorable reviews on both sides of the
Atlantic resulted in American publication of the
books.

The Frosts sailed for the United States in

February 1915 and landed in New York
City.
Sales of his books enabled Frost to buy a
farm in Franconia, N.H.; to place new
poems in literary periodicals and publish a
third book, Mountain Interval (1916); and
to embark on a long career of writing,
teaching, and lecturing.

Frosts poetic theory

He emphasized on the dramatic qualities
of poetry.
He believed that all poetry is essentially
metaphorical.
He insisted that poetry cannot be forced
into being.
He thought that poetry serves as a means
of giving patterns to mans existence.

Major Features of Frosts Poems

He was an essentially pastoral poet often
associated with rural New England.
He used the rural world as a source of
symbols, whose philosophical dimensions
transcend any region.
His adopts traditional verse forms, plain
language and everyday speech to explore
the complexity of human existence
through treating seemingly trivial subjects.

Frost's most popular poems:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The Road Not Taken,
After Apple-picking
Mending Wall
Birches

Stopping by
Woods on a
Snowy
Evening
- Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy

Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

Points of the poem

1. The analogy between
the specific experience of the rural traveler
the general experience of any individual
whose life is so frequently described as a
journey; a journey including pleasures and
hardships, duties and distances.
2. Theme of the poem: The poem is
primarily oriented towards the pleasures of
the scene and the responsibility of life.

Understanding of the Poem

Metaphors:
Promises Our own promises or duties
that we must fulfill.
Miles - experience we must travel
through before death
Sleep - death

Interlocking enclosed rhyme

The first stanza rhymes in aaba and b
becomes the new repeated end rhymes in
the second stanza. That makes stanza 2
rhyming in bbcb. Similarly, the third
stanza rhymes in ccbc, whereas the very
last stanza rhymes in a consistent d
which brings the poem to a harmonious
end.

The Road Not Taken

-Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Understanding of the poem

Realistic nature description
Portrayal of basic qualities of human
nature.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Scientific Interpretation of Fire and Ice

Some think that the earth may be burnt up
by the sun (fire),
Others say Ice Age will kill life on the
Earth.

Spiritual and Psychological meaning of

the Symbols in the poem
1. Fire - a symbol of desire, or love
Helen of Troy
Cleopatra, Egyptian queen
The two beauties had wars fought over them.
2. Ice - a symbol of hatred
These are the two weaknesses of
human beings that are as destructive as
natural disasters

Questions for further discussion

How Frost display his poetic theories in
the three poems we have learned?
Sum up Frosts major poetic style in your
words, and illustrate it.