Poesía Norteamericana S. XX, Apuntes de Poesía

¡Descarga Poesía Norteamericana S. XX y más Apuntes en PDF de Poesía solo en Docsity! XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY ANALYSIS OF POEMS 1. SEA ROSE, H.D. 2. SITALKAS, H.D. 3. OREAD, H.D. 4. EPIGRAM, H.D. 5. EVENING, H.D. 6. THE GARDEN, H.D. 7. THE POOL, H.D. 8. PRIAPUS KEEPER OF ORCHARDS, H.D. 9. HERMES OF THE WAYS, H.D. 10. TONIGHT, EDWARD THOMAS 11. THE GREAT FIGURE, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 12. THE RED WHEEL BARROW, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 13. ANECDOTE OF THE JAR, WALLACE STEVENS 14. THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD, WALLACE STEVENS 15. IN A STATION OF A METRO, EZRA POUND 16. FAN PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD, EZRA POUND 17. LIU CH’E, EZRA POUND 18. TS’AI CHI’H, EZRA POUND 19. APRIL, EZRA POUND 20. ALBA, EZRA POUND 21. A GIRL, EZRA POUND 22. DORIA, EZRA POUND 23. A WHITE STAG, EZRA POUND 24. THE JEWEL STAIRS’GRIEVANCE, EZRA POUND 25. THE BEAUTIFUL TOILET, EZRA POUND 26. TAKING LEAVE OD A FRIEND, EZRA POUND 27. THE RIVER’S MERCHANT’S WIFE: A LETTER, EZRA POUND 28. LAMENT OF THE FRONTIER GUARD, EZRA POUND 29. SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU (PICK FERNS, PICK FERNS), EZRA POUND 30. POEM BY THE BRIDGE AT TEN-SHIN, EZRA POUND 31. HOME BURIAL, ROBERT FROST 32. THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN, ROBERT FROST 33. MENDING WALL, ROBERT FROST 34. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, ROBERT FROST 35. FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHNG, ROBERT FROST 36. DESIGN, ROBERT FROST 37. NEITHER OUT FAR NOR IN DEEP, ROBERT FROST 38. MOWING, ROBERT FROST 39. AFTER APPLE PICKING, ROBERT FROST 40. BIRCHES, ROBERT FROST 41. STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING, ROBERT FROST 42. A STEEPLE ON THE HOUSE, ROBERT FROST 43. NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, ROBERT FROST 44. ONCE BY THE PACIFIC, ROBERT FROST 45. BEREFT, ROBERT FROST 46. DESERT PLACES, ROBERT FROST 47. SAND DUNES, ROBERT FROST 48. TO EARTHWARD, ROBERT FROST 49. THE OVEN BIRD, ROBERT FROST 50. HYLA-BROOK, ROBERT FROST 51. PASTURE, ROBERT FROST 52. THE COMING OF WAR, ACTAEON, EZRA POUND 53. HISTRION, EZRA POUND 54. FRANCESCA, EZRA POUND 55. PROVINCIA DESERTA, EZRA POUND XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY 56. SESTINA: ALTAFORTE, EZRA POUND 57. THE SEAFARER, EZRA POUND 58. CANTO XLV (WITH USURA), EZRA POUND 59. CANTO I, EZRA POUND 60. CANTO IV, EZRA POUND 61. THIS IS JUST TO SAY, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 62. THE RIGHT OF WAY, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 63. THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 64. IDYL, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 65. PORTRAIT OF A LADY, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 66. QUEEN ANNE’S LACE, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 67. EARTHY ANECDOTE, WALLACE STEVENS 68. METAPHORS OF A MAGNIFICO, WALLACE STEVENS 69. STUDY OF TWO PEARS, WALLACE STEVENS 70. DEATH OF A SOLDIER, WALLACE STEVENS 71. THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM, WALLACE STEVENS 72. THE SNOWMAN, WALLACE STEVENS 73. TEA AT THE PALAZ OF HOON, WALLACE STEVENS 74. A DISILLUSIONMENT AT TEN O’CLOCK, WALLACE STEVENS HILDA DOOLITTLE SEA ROSE, H.D. When reading this poem we can ask ourselves why this rose isn’t as pretty as the ones we run across in everyday life. The answer to this question is that the sea rose dries up, has ugly leaves, is acrid and ineagre, it doesn’t smell well, etc. While the sea rose is a wild rose, garden roses are more conventional and safe roses. However the speaker of the poem values the strangeness of this peculiar rose. The peculiar thing about this rose is that it is stuck in the drift. That is to say, that it is to be found in an intersection of two different realms: land and sea. The sea is not a stable place since it suffers continuous changes. However, these sea roses, despite being thrown and slanted, they yet emerge triumphant. This is why this rose is not only a symbol for love, but also for divine or immortal love. We have to take into account the use of language in the poem: the harsh “r” sound and the repetition of the “s” sound was considered unpoetic. SITALKAS, H.D. First of all, Sitalkas is the corn God in Greek mythology, but in the poem we wonder what kind of God this is. All H.D. poems are written against the backdrop of Greek mythology. This poem is a monologue and not a dialogue. The undertones of this poem are very erotic, since sexuality and fecundity take place. The poem dwells in a moment of transformation; it is a moment of epiphany. Somehow the modernists cannot disentangle themselves from Romanticism, even though they repudiate it. This poem is actually really Romantic: the moment of illumination is translated into a language that is concrete. This is achieved by recording your emotions or sensations in a very precise way. However, this objectivity is based on subjectivity. This poem is another example of an exact recording of sense impressions. OREAD, H.D. This poem has to be compared to the poem of “July” by Edward Thomas. In “Oread” the woman perceives the sea in terms of a pine and fir forest. She brings together words that belong to different semantic realms such as “forest and “water”. The image is a non-discursive one, there is no rhyme and we have two or three beats per line. Meaning is produced only by the juxtaposition of these concrete images. The image is no longer translatable in ordinary language; it becomes a lens through which another reality is created. In fact, it does not reflect reality. The image is a vortex through which or into XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY In this poem we have a contrast between “wilderness”, on one hand and the “jar” on the other. This means that in contrast with the nature’s wilderness, the jar is a plain and simple object. The jar gives a sense of order since it imposes form. However, since it is described in terms of “gray” and “bare” it means that it is sterile, it gives form but not life. So, in this sense, the jar evidences an absence of nature. The object takes dominion: in opposition to wilderness, it doesn’t receive anything and nothing emerges from it. “Wilderness” on the other hand, is “slovenly”, which means that it is untidy, undeveloped, uncultivated. Another important aspect to take into account is that the word “wilderness” is culturally charged since it is part of American identity. The poem represents this opposition between wilderness and civilization or culture. Steven declares himself on the side of nature and spontaneity. THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD, WALLACE STEVENS The poem is characterized by the use simple declarative sentences and simple grammatical structures. It includes 13 stanzas. Even though they seem to be independent poems, all the stanzas are hold together by the motif of the blackbird. Although all the stanzas involve the figure of a blackbird, they are a series of statements without a particular order. The poem is an example of Cubist multi-perspectivism. The meaning of “blackbird” depends on the context and changes in each stanza (ambiguous): death, autumn, seasonal change, etc. It doesn’t have a constant signification; however, it does have a constant function. The poems are about what the blackbird suggests to the imagination and they constitute a series of examples of how imagination works. • Stanza I This image represents power and isolation. There is a contrast between black and white as well as between the immensity and hugeness of the mountains and the tiny eye of the blackbird. The immensity stands for death. The question is, does the “eye = I” see the death? The “I” is the point that orders everything that surrounds it. • Stanza II The blackbird seems to have become the substance of our imagination. “Three” is a mythological and religious number which represents the trinity. The blackbird sits in the tree like three different possibilities. The image of three blackbirds being three minds in a tree suggests a trinity of the conscious mind. The three blackbirds may represent the physical body, the brain and the knowledge. • Stanza III The bird loses control since a force (the wind) is acting on the bird. This is a part of the natural process of autumn. The bird is a tiny example of life. That is why this suggests a comparison between the role that the blackbird plays in the cycle of life and nature and the role a thought plays in our mind. In this stanza we have a synecdoche (a specific image represents a general phenomena). • Stanza IV A man and a woman are the same if we add a blackbird since they are all one. Man and woman are complementary opposites that form a unity, a whole. Since the blackbird is an unknown element of existence, it is the blackbird that adds this element of the unknown. • Stanza V Blackbirds will give each reader a different picture in their mind. We have to read deeper in order to draw out the meaning. “Innuendoes” in the poem means something that is not said. We can find aesthetic satisfaction in direct statements and its implications. • Stanza VI The shadow of the blackbird crosses the window. The shadow provokes a sudden flush of intuition which is ungraspable to himself and the reader. Between the man’s mood and the window we have the blackbird. The blackbird is something that creates an effect. Both in the window and in the shadow, the blackbird creates an indecipherable and extraordinary effect. • Stanza VII “Golden Blackbirds” are a symbol for immortality and eternity. The question here is, why do you look for the exotic when the blackbird can be as exotic as the supernatural? Women are down to Earth with the blackbird while men imagine golden birds in the heights and therefore are impossible to obtain. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY • Stanza VIII The blackbird can be an influence to the writing of the poet. This stanza represents a tribute to the blackbird (nature). Sound is very important, but poetry is not only a beautiful sound, there is something else involved besides the beautiful language. And this something is the blackbird. • Stanza IX The circles mentioned in this stanza refer to the cycles of life. The line of vision in time and space is delimited by the blackbird. The blackbird kind of creates an intangible area. Circles are also an allusion to an essay of Emerson. • Stanza X This stanza is obscene, but art goes beyond the beauty of language. • Stanza XI Between the man and the glass coach is the terror of the blackbird. • Stanza XII The relationship is casual: If the river moves (water flows), nature lives and the blackbird flies. Water symbolizes life. As long as we live, our intellect flies. This is the first instance in which the blackbird is not present. The blackbird is interconnected with the river; it suggests the physical world in a constant world of flux. • Stanza XIII The blackbird expresses our despair at death. Evening is a symbol for aging, death and night. The blackbird is sitting in the cedar limbs, which represents the slowing down of our thoughts. To sum up we could say that the black bird is associated with death, the temporal and the intrinsic. It is part of nature and it is a determining focus of relation. It is at the substance of the things which it relates to. It is part of our fears, the mysterious, the unknown but also the ordinary that can be exotic. It is also a certain kind of language, our line of vision and of thought. EZRA POUND IN A STATION OF A METRO, EZRA POUND This is one of the most famous imagist poems and it evidences the influence of Japanese Haiku in Modernist poetry. The poem doesn’t have a verb; it is a juxtaposition of images. The first line represents a kind of birth and the second line is what follows after birth. The second line of the poem represents petals that come into being by emerging from the darkness. In this poem, Pound establishes a parallelism between the modern underground and the underworld. In the poem, objects reveal themselves; there’s no eye. Pound juxtaposes a series of images and out of this juxtaposition he achieves a very intense imaginative impact. The poem is a revelation of the essence XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY of life and the essence of things. Something that is objective and external becomes subjective and internal. Key words: • apparition = An “apparition” is something supernatural, something that is not real and that hides a halo of mystery. • blackness = “Blackness” stands for death and fatality. • wet = “Wet” is an adjective that refers to the water, which is the principle of life. Perhaps it refers to spring showers. • bough = This word is related to Frazer’s popular book The Golden Bough. The Golden Bough is actually one of the mythological tales written in the Aeneid. It tells the story of Aeneas who survived the Trojan War and fled to find a new empire. He consulted the oracle, which said that he had to do a journey to the underworld to see the shade of his dead father. Since when you go to the underworld you never come back, the sibyl at the Temple of Apollo agreed to accompany him on this journey. Before entering the underworld, the sibyl tells Aeneas that he has to get the Golden Bough and give it to the queen of the underworld (the “golden bough” is a symbol of immortality). FAN PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD, EZRA POUND When analyzing the poem we have to bear in mind that a fan is an object of beauty and richness for a woman of power or high class. The poem evidences Pound’s concern with the fate of the courtesans. Song of Regret is the original song on which this poem is based and where the story of a woman being the favorite of the emperor Cheng Han is told. As well as in Pound’s poem, the woman is compared to a fan. In Pound’s poem, the same way rich women used to use a fan to show their splendor, the Imperial Lord of the women addressed in the poem was using her to show his greatness. The key word in the poem is “fan”. The fan is white and its beauty comes from it being spotless and pure, which are the properties of “white silk”. The fan is compared to frost and it is described to be even “clear” or “transparent”, which is a step further than “white”. The fan appears to be personified as a woman. The metaphor we have here is the one of the woman represented as a fan. The fan being made of white silk is a metaphor that depicts the woman’s beauty as delicate, just as silk is. As for the “frost” metaphor, frost melts when the sun hits it. This means that the woman’s beauty and loveliness melt and are gone in the eyes of her lover. The result of it is her being laid aside. In fact, the fan is laid aside because what makes this woman beautiful are not the attributes like “beauty”, “having power”, “having wealth”, but her youthfulness and her capacity for growth, which is represented in the poem through the word “grass-blade”. In growing we are mysterious and we have hopes. However, in perfection we are static. The attributes of the lady are given in terms of attributes of the fan. Pound suppresses the metaphors and he just keeps features such as “whiteness” and “clearness”. The fan is turned metaphorically in a human situation. The tone of the poem is somehow depressing as it gives us the feeling that nothing can be done to gain his love again (sense of hopelessness). LIU CH’E, EZRA POUND To analyze this poem we have to know who Wu Ti was. He was an emperor of the Wu Han dynasty who was famous for opening the silk route and being a powerful ruler. He would also contribute to the development of art. This poem describes a lady who lives at the court because she wears silk. The first four lines represent the loss and absence of a beloved person. The poem is not a Victorian sing song since we don’t have any rhyme. Instead it is written in free verse. Compared with Giles’ version of the poem, Pound improves the level of suggestions. In Giles’ poem the tone is happy and there’s too much decoration. The reader doesn’t have the sense that somebody is grieving. However, in this poem, Pound suppresses the direct venting of grief and he presents an image. In his poem it is a fallen leaf now that represents death. The wet leaves remind us of autumn and the rain which could be a metaphor for tears and sadness. The “threshold” is a symbol for a place of union, both of life and death. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY together. Nevertheless she can’t say the same thing about herself: The butterflies hurt her because they make her realize that she’s growing older but without her husband. At the end of the poem, the woman confesses that she’s willing to walk a long distance to meet her husband: “I will come out to meet you, as far as Cho-fu-Sa”. Her insistence and her impatience for rejoining with her husband cannot be hidden. LAMENT OF THE FRONTIER GUARD, EZRA POUND The main topic of the poem is the war and its consequences. The poem constitutes a lament of sorrow and resignation and the poet shows us the true consequences of war. The poem is more a personal observation and Pound adapts the poem to Europe. In the end, no one will know of the fate of the soldiers. Whatever will happen to them won’t be known. The repetition pattern in the poem suggests unending grief. The poem starts with a frontier guard waiting for the enemy to come from the North. Although he’s waiting for the enemy, the only thing he sees is devastation and desolation. Everything around him has been destroyed. After that, the frontier thinks and asks himself who might be guilty in this war. This question he poses himself is a reference from the Bible: “Who brought this to pass?”. The answer to the question is “barbarous kings”. The speaker continues describing how war makes us jump from the beautiful spring (when we are young) to the bloody autumn, which is a symbol for death and old age. The soldier, in fact, looses part of his life, adolescence and adulthood, when he is at war and this is why the summer is not mentioned in the poem. The sorrow he feels, falls like rain. The soldier realizes that there is no future in this devastated place. There are neither children nor men who could defend this land. At the end of the poem we are told the name of the soldier: “Rihoku”. Nobody knows who he was and nobody will ever see his sorrow. He won’t be remembered as a hero even though he will die fighting for his country. Soldiers will be used to feed tigers. SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU (PICK FERNS, PICK FERNS), EZRA POUND This poem is structured in one stanza composed by 25 lines and it is a poem written for soldiers at war. It deals with the topic of war and its effects in ancient times. It uses clear and simple language and it is constructed around four semantic fields: war, sadness, nature and places: • Words related to war = foemen (3), defense (8), chariot (15), general (15,19,20), horses (16,18,20), soldiers (19), arrows (20), quivers (21), enemy (22). • Words related to sadness and feelings = sorrow (6,7,26), hungry (7,25), thirsty (7,25), bitter (13), tired (18). • Words related to nature = fern-shoots (1,5), fern-stalks (10), horses (16,18,20), flower (14, willows (23), snow (24), fish-skin (21). • Words related to places = Ken-in, Mongols The poem starts by describing how the soldiers used to be farmers and are now forced to fight in a war. Pound describes the soldiers and their condition of life compared to the generals. We can observe the difference between generals and soldiers in the poem: generals can ride horses while soldiers have to walk along. Generals have much better battle conditions as soldiers; they are better dressed and equipped (21-22). The last 4 lines of the poem are a question posed by a soldier. This final part deals with the appearance of the enemy (22) and the last thoughts of the soldiers before the battle (25). POEM BY THE BRIDGE AT TEN-SHIN, EZRA POUND The poem starts with an observation of spring as a brief, transitory moment in nature. The life of the blossoms is short-lived just the same as a beauty and youth as states of the human condition. The speaker realizes that the men that hang over the bridge today are not the same men of the past. There’s a parallellism between the brief moment of spring and the brief moment of human life. It is, in fact, for a short period of time that we men are in the spring of life. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY In the third stanza the speaker describes how people enjoy the delights and pleasures of life but are not aware that they are also doomed. All these people having a great time won’t be remembered because they haven’t done anything to be remembered. They are somehow deluded by their own importance. The splendor of the moment will fade away. Spring doesn’t bring consoling thoughts of another spring. There’s nostalgia for the past, a disenchantment of the present. In the last passage we have a comparison between people today and people of the past. He looks at the present and compares it with the past. Lady Ryokushu is opposed to the royal fashion, that is why she will be remembered. Hanrei is another hero that will be remembered for being self-reliant, independent and a self sufficient man. This is the type of man who is at the centre of American identity. ROBERT FROST HOME BURIAL, ROBERT FROST Summary: This poem is a dialogue between a husband and his wife who have recently lost their child. The husband is standing at the bottom of the stairs and does not understand what his wife is looking at. The woman, on the other hand, is sad after catching sight of the child’s grave through the window. At the beginning her husband doesn’t immediately recognize the cause of her distress. She tries to leave the house and he asks her to share her grief with him and give him a chance. He doesn’t understand what it is he does that disturbs her so much. She vents some anger and frustration, but the distance between them remains. The poem ends when she opens the door to leave as he calls after her. One of the poems characteristics is that it has a dramatic, tense and emotional tone. If we analyze its structure, we could say that it is very similar to a theatre play: it is a narrative poem based on a dialogue. There is little introduction, little framing and no consoling conclusion or ending. The reader is launched directly in their conflict. The setting of the poem is the staircase with a door at the bottom and a window at the top. Wife and husband are in conflicting positions since she stands at the top of the stairs and her husband at the bottom of the stairs. They live in a very harsh rural world where they have to bury their relatives XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY themselves. Home, in fact, is a place of love and security; but for these people it is the habitation of death, a kind of prison, a home for anguish. Home suggests more mutual mistrust, fear and alienation. In the end she wants to escape from that tense atmosphere: the door is her freedom. The main themes of the poem are: grief, the limits of communication and marriage breakdown. The two main tragedies described in the poem are the death of a child and the collapse of marriage. The main characters of the poem are a wife and her husband. They represent two different ways of grieving and have different responses to tragedy. These differences create a distance in their relationship. The wife doesn’t get over the loss of her child with the passing of time. She can’t accept his loss that is why she won’t accept returning from the grave back to the world of living. If she would do so, it would mean that she accepts the death of her child. Furthermore, she declares that the world is evil. The husband, on the contrary, has accepted death. He did grieve but by saying that “That’s the way of the world”, he is actually accepting death as part of the life cycle. The man chooses to grieve in a more physical manner. The very fact of digging the grave himself is described like the functioning of a machine. He has managed to deal with the loss more successfully than she has, and this is why he’s portrayed closer to the door, since the door represents the outside world. To the wife the act of burying his own child is an act of indifference while for the husband it has been an act of suffering. It is a very tense family scene since she thinks he is insensitive to what happened to their child. The purpose of the poem, however, is not to determine the right way to grieve, but to represent a failure of empathy and communication between two people at home. Quotes • Line 10: He seems to be a very fearsome figure. His words are almost an invitation to visualize their separation. People are locked in their view; they are not able to communicate. She wants to escape from him. • Lines 23-24: Robert Frost likens the window with a bedroom and the graveyard. • Line 25: “Bedroom” refers to their relationship and represents their marital problems. • Line 62: He doesn’t understand her grief. • Lines 84-86: She is throwing back in his face what he did. • Lines 89-90: By saying this he’s accepting her accusations. • Lines 91-94: He talks in terms of survival. There is nothing there that can protect you from death and change but time rots everything. He’s also talking about his inability to build a fence that will last. • Lines 106-107: She wants to hold on to her grief because in this way her child is still alive. She kind of affirms the necessity of suffering. THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN, ROBERT FROST Summary: Mary asks her husband Warren to take back Silas, a previous farm worker who had always disappointed him. Silas is very ill and Mary thinks that he has returned to the farm to die. Her husband is still angry with Silas and he does not want to have him on his property since Silas let him down in the past. Mary manages to convince his husband, but when Warren goes to him he is already dead. The setting of the poem is a rural environment and the main themes are the tradition of duty and hard work on the farm. The three main characters in this poem are Mary (wife), Warren (husband), Silas (farm worker): Silas returns in order to settle his debt with Warren and die honorably, having fulfilled his duty to the family and to the community. Only the sense of duty and the satisfaction of hard work can provide him with comfort. Although Silas has a rich brother who is a banker, he seems to see Mary and Warren as family. Warren and Mary are not prosperous and it is strange that Silas won’t go to his biological family to die. Silas comes and goes, he’s a kind of vagabond, he’s vulnerable and a lonesome man. He never married and in the end, even though he returns to Mary and Warren to die, he dies alone. Warren stands for justice and Mary stands for mercy, love and compassion. Mary has the charity which Silas’ brother lacks and what Frost seems to be saying is that we don’t need progress, what we need is love and compassion. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY In the poem we also find an allusion to Plato’s parable of the cave, in which the pursuers turn their backs on the only reality they can ever know: the land and all that it represents. In doing so, they have been reduced to reflections or images of true human beings. They have become nameless and faceless copies of the real thing. The people in the poem are wasting their lives searching for something, “the truth”, a mystery they hope to grasp. The fact is that the land may be the real source of truth and not the sea. The truth is not in the sea since they can’t look neither far nor deep. MOWING, ROBERT FROST Summary: The speaker thinks about the sound that a scythe makes in a field when mowing hay and what this sound might mean. He is unable to hear what the scythe is saying and he admits the possibility that the sound is his imagination. He concludes saying that the scythe is expressing its own belief of the world. Instead of dreaming about inactivity or reward for labor as a person would, the scythe takes its pleasure from its hard work. The narrator follows the scythe’s example: focus on hard work and making hay. This is a poem of everyday life on a farm. Frost emphasizes on reality, the lives and struggles of real people. Most of Frost poems perform a kind of phenomenology of work. It is because he cuts the grass that he discovers the pale orchises and the bright green snake. Whatever we get, we get at nature’s cost and this is the relationship between man and nature that Frost wants to present us. While he works, this work gives way to an aesthetic satisfaction. The speaker is actively involved, he’s not an outsider. Imagination is not the domain of dreams (Yeats): To dream signifies leisurely idleness and aestheticism. But for Frost, the poet has to become engaged with the real world, and it is out of this engagement that you have an aesthetic experience. Frost ends the poem with a process: He returns to the world of mowing, that is to say, to the process of labor. He doesn’t give us truth as a product, but he gives us truth as an action or process. We don’t get satisfaction in the results themselves, but in the process of making, and this same idea applies to the process of poetry writing. Key words: • whisper: The use of the word “whisper” personifies the scythe. The scythe could be seen as the reflection of the narrator’s own beliefs. The whisper is not a dream of idle hours. Frost evidences himself against the Romantic idea that poetry is received passively (emotion recollected in tranquility). For Frost poetry is not a leisurely activity, it is action. • scythe: Scythe stands for death • earnest love: “Earnest love” is linked to Oscar Wilde’s “The important of being Earnest”. What Frost wants to tell us is that we have to cut away what is inflated to get to the truth (simplification). The word “love”, on the other hand, appears in crucial parts in Frost’s poems. Labor is an act of love. • truth: Truth means involvement and commitment between the man and the world. AFTER APPLE PICKING, ROBERT FROST Summary: After a day of apple-picking the speaker is tired. He feels himself beginning to dream but he cannot escape the thought of his apples even in sleep: he sees visions of apples growing from blossoms, falling off trees and piling up in the cellar. He wonders if it is the normal sleep of a tired man or the deep winter sleep of death. The farmer cannot escape the mental act of picking apples. This is why his sleep is spoiled since his sleep is marked by the responsibility during the day. He even sees the apples in front of him and feels the ache in his foot as he is standing on the ladder. This is an example of how Frost always hangs on to the tangible reality. It is a poem of fulfillment in earthily labor. Labor leads an aesthetic and contemplative insight. He has deep satisfaction in picking apples and work is his only reward. What Frost tries to tell us is that you live while you continue working: the upper you climb the ladder, the better apples you can pick. The poem also represents the seasonal changes that lead to death. Although the narrator does not say when this experience takes place, we know that it is autumn or harvest time, and, therefore, winter is close: the grass is hoary, the water is frozen enough to be used as a pane of glass, etc. Death is coming XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY but the narrator does not know if the death will be renewed by spring or if everything will remain buried. It is not clear when the speaker is dreaming or when he is awake. he even wonder if his sleep is a kind of hibernation. It could be that the narrator is dying and remembering the act of apple picking can represent a man who is about to leave the world of the living. He actually says that he’s done with apple-picking, which could be translated into “he is ready to die”. In this poem, Frost alternates long lines with short lines, which creates a wavering effect. Key words: • ladder: This indicated an aim towards heaven • apples: This fruit is related to fall, harvest time, knowledge and it is also the forbidden fruit. BIRCHES, ROBERT FROST The speaker talks about one of his childhood experiences, swinging on birches, which was a game for rural children. However, this is a solitary game, a game that the speaker plays alone. As the boy climbs up the tree, he’s climbing towards heaven, a place where his imagination can be free. The narrator says, in fact, that climbing a birch is a way “to get away from earth awhile”. So, the act of swinging on birches is represented as a way to escape the “truth” or rationality of the adult world. Nevertheless, compared to a child, the adult can no longer escape his responsibilities. He’s aware of the “truth” of birches: their bends are caused by winter storms, not by a boy swinging on them. Therefore, the speaker prefers the realm of Earth (Frost’s poetry is earthily bound), but at the same time he also wants to get away from Earth when he feels disorientated or frustrated. He wants to go up and down between Heaven and Earth (there’s a direct tie between man and God). He wants to climb the birches towards heaven but also return to Earth: “both going and coming back”. The escape is only a temporary one, since he cannot avoid returning to the “truth” and his responsibilities as an adult. Key words: • birches: Birches point to heaven, which is a place to aspire to. Aspiration for heaven is the central orientation of the soul. STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING, ROBERT FROST Summary: A man has stopped by the woods on a snowy evening to see the snow fall. He has stopped to enjoy the landscape. He is tempted to stay longer but he has obligations and considering the distance that he still has to travel before he can rest at night, he decides to go. In terms of form and structure, the poem consists of four stanzas and in each stanza line 1, 2 and 4 rhyme (e.g. know-though-snow, queer-near-year, shake-mistake-flake, deep-keep-sleep). In the first stanza the man is worried that the owner of the wood might see him there. We may think that the owner of the wood is God and that his house, the church, is in the village. Whoever the owner of the woods is, he brings together two realms: the woods and the village. The man experiences a kind of death-wish. He experiences in the woods a fascination that has nothing to do with the real world. It’s a kind of desire to the world of sleep, a kind of hypnosis, a winter sleep and an attraction towards nature. He has to decide between staying longer and his responsibilities outside the woods. Nature invites him to give up his obligations and responsibilities; he’s tempted by the wind. However, the horse doesn’t understand this hypnotic attraction or fascination with the snow (third presence). At this point we have to take into account what “the woods” actually mean. The woods are a symbol for wilderness; they are dark, seductive, restful and deep. It seems that the woods are in a forbidden ground. The horse doesn’t know the second meaning of darkness, the man, however, does. To rest too long while snow falls could lead to lose the path, freeze and finally die. Even though he’s a man in the middle of his life that would like to give up his commitments, he still has a long way to go before the final end. The word “sleep” has two possible meanings as well, it can refer to the end of life or to the action of sleeping itself. We can see in this poem how Frost starts with a simple description, but a larger meaning grows out of the poem. The poem is more than the image of a man getting lost in the woods. The reader asks himself two questions: Why did the man stop? Do the woods represent death? XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY A STEEPLE ON THE HOUSE, ROBERT FROST The steeple is useful for the soul, but not for the body. The poem raises the question on what does it mean to believe in eternity or immortality. It gives us meaning and dignity to our life. It makes us capable of disinterested love and goodness. Immortality may be useless, but it makes our lives significant. Key phrase: “the house of life the house of worship”. NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, ROBERT FROST The title “Nothing gold can stay” implies the idea of the inevitability of destiny. Eden seems to grief. “Gold” stands for the golden age, paradise, Eden, innocence that we lose in time. ONCE BY THE PACIFIC, ROBERT FROST Summary: The ocean waves seem to be preparing to destroy the land. The shore, the cliffs and the continent are allied against this threat of the coming storm. The narrator doubts that they will be successful at preventing this and advices that someone should better get prepared for the ocean’s rage, which may last not only a night but an age. The poem is a sonnet and its main topic is the destructive rage of the ocean against all mankind. This malevolent power against mankind is a force that acts through nature. We have a dark and malicious intention, and mankind is the object of this natural destructive force. In the poem, this force is given human characteristics, it is personified. Frost ends the poem with a question about the source of the ocean’s destructive rage: Is it possible that the same God who ordered “let there be light”, could be provoking the ocean to destroy mankind? Frost leaves it to the reader whether God has abandoned humanity and allied himself with the angry forces of nature. The title carries the opposite connotation of this devastating storm through the word “pacific”. “Once” does clearly refer to the past. BEREFT, ROBERT FROST This sonnet describes a night in the life of a lonely man. He has lost someone, which has left him alone in his life. It seems that nature is taking advantage of his solitude and trying to intimidate him with its “roar winds”, its “somber clouds” and its “sagging floor”. The last two lines of the poem imply a sense of sadness, isolation and abandonment. In the poem, Frost plays with the “r” sound using words such as: before, floor, door, for, roar, shore, etc. Analysis: • lines 1-2: The poem starts with a question. The speaker is alone in sorrow and he has no one left but God. The man has become aware of sounds. • lines 3-5: Here we find another question. He wonders what this roaring wind would think of him just standing there at the door holding it open with the wind pushing against it while he stares downhill to the shore. • lines 6-7: Summer is over and it is the end of the decay (autumn). This refers to the narrator’s age: his youth is gone and old age is upon him (somber clouds). He also looks west, which is where the sun sets. The “west” is therefore, a symbol of decay and death. • line 8-10: The speaker is comparing the leaves with a snake without using the word snake. This means that the man has fear. • lines 11-16: The speaker describes this scene as sinister. He says that he is not only alone in the house, but also in life. The secret is that he has no one left but God. DESERT PLACES, ROBERT FROST The poem is written from the 1st person perspective and the main topic is loneliness and the tie between man and nature. The first, second and fourth line of each stanza rhyme. The speaker is passing an empty field during a snowy evening. The field is surrounded by woods and what he sees is loneliness. The animals are deep in their lairs. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY POEMAS BY EZRA POUND THE COMING OF WAR, ACTAEON, EZRA POUND Pound uses the idea of the mythical metamorphosis of Actaeon for the coming of war and this is why all the words in the poem make reference to mythology and antiquity. Actaeon was a hero in Greek mythology that from hunter turned into the hunted and was transformed into a stag. This myth is used to symbolize ritual human sacrifice in order to please a God or Goddess. In the case, Actaeon symbolizes the sacrifice. We have a procession of people, which are called cortège in the poem (modern word and element in the poem). Pound compares this visionary moment to the actual events that were taking place in Europe (1st World War). In fact, Pound establishes a comparison between the modern soldiers and the soldiers of antiquity (heroes of Greek mythology). Pound looks at history with the desire to identify with the past and to project into the past modern concern that might have been as well ancient preoccupations. We can see throughout the poem how Pound is concerned with the violence and destruction of the 1st World War and he uses the ancient myth of Actaeon to show the hopelessness and the loss of innocence in war. Each line in its own way expresses the broken thoughts of the writer. Pound also uses the sea as a metaphor for the mind since it is unstill and ceasing when agitated, just like the sea is. Key words: • Lethe: In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers of Hades that flows in the Underworld. All those who drank from it experienced forgetfulness. HISTRION, EZRA POUND This is one of Pound’s early poems. It evokes the process in which of the self is released from its material incarnation to assume its ideal, poetic character as one of the "Masters of the Soul". The poem is an approach to ancient poetry in which Pound brings the forms that live in our souls back to life. FRANCESCA, EZRA POUND Francesca was one of Dante’s characters who fell in love with a troubadour. It is a love song through which the man claims his love for her and his desire to see her again. He wants to meet her alone and he’s jealous when anybody else pronounces her name in public. She is so pure to him that when other people talk about her, it is sacrilegious for him. He wants to rescue her name from the encounter of people. In this poem we can appreciate the kind of approach Pound has to the past: he rescues the beauties of the past for the new generations, but at the same time he considered that an excessive attachment to the past is dangerous and ignorant. For Pound the past is useful to the present since it serves to renew the new civilization. PROVINCIA DESERTA, EZRA POUND Pound goes to the land of the troubadours and evokes older cities and castles that were important to them. He mentions everything he sees in these cities, it’s almost like evoking a name and bringing it into being (the poet names things and brings them into being). History is the interruption between a modern consciousness and a simple moment in the past. By looking at the landscape he tries to recreate the past. He begins speaking about the landscape of Southern France and goes back to the Romantic poets who described it. At the end of the poem he tells the story of two troubadours, Pieire de Maensac and Austors. One of them inherited the profession of troubadour and the other inherited the house. Pound XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY imagines the scene how they separated their inheritance. Pieire, who sings to the wife of a noble man, fell in love with her and she finally decides to leave her husband and go with him. Her husband starts a war because he wants to recover her. The title mentions the desert province that becomes alive with Pound’s poem. SESTINA: ALTAFORTE, EZRA POUND The sestina is a form that troubadours invented. Pound’s poem consists of 6 stanzas of 6 lines each, except the last one which has only 3 lines. The poem has no rhyme. Each stanza has 6 lines and each line ends in the same words which are repeated in the following stanza in a different order. The ending words are: “peace,” “music,” “clash,” “opposing,” “crimson,” and “rejoicing”. At the beginning of the poem, Pound provides some background information to help the reader through the poem: “Loquitur” means speaker, which in this case is the medieval warlord Bertrans de Born. Eccovi in Italian means “here you are”. The poem starts with Bertrans de Born addressing his jongleur Papiols. The poem is an exaltation of war. It narrates Bertans obsessions with going to war. He believes that participating in a war is a man’s thing and rejects those men who don’t think the same (For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing). It seems that he loves to fight because he thinks peace is a "womanish" thing. Every time Pound uses the word peace in this poem, he's saying something negative about it ("all this our South stinks peace" "the earth's foul peace"). He considers peace a womanish thing. After World War I, Pound felt guilty for writing this poem. Key words: • il contrapasso: this is a punishment you receive in hell. His punishment in hell is to be divided THE SEAFARER Pound translated this poem from Old English into Modern English in 1911. He tried in his modern version to be faithful to the rhythm and this is why he gave preference to sound over meaning. Pound tries to recover the musical dimension of the poem since at the time, poems were meant to be sung. When Pound translated it, he was attacked by the Anglo-Saxon scholars because they considered he had made a very free adaptation. Pound, in fact, tries to rescue the musicality of the text but he didn’t care about the meaning of the words. Pound believes that his version is different from the original one since he eliminated parts of the original text. The Seafarer” is told from the point of view of a seafarer. The figure of the seafarer is the figure of exile and at the same time the figure of the modern man and the modern poet. The seafarer is all men who do not understand their beginnings, whose immortality exists only in the memories of those who come after. Summary The speaker of "The Seafarer" remembers terrible cold and loneliness. In the poem the seafarer expresses his despair and isolation at being out at sea, which is cold and eerie (Coldly afflicted / My feet were by frost benumbed / Chill its chains are). Then, he compares his experience to that of the people on land, who don’t know anything about hardship and who will never understand his suffering. According to the seafarer, because it's only through the praise of the living after one's death that a person can hope to live forever, people should fight hard against the devil so their bravery will be remembered after their death. The days of earthly glory are over, the speaker tells us, because the wealthy and powerful civilizations have fallen. No matter how much we try to XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY comfort the dead and ourselves with gold, it won't work because a sinful soul can't take his gold with him after death. The seafarer tells us that it's important to fear God and that only a fool does not fear God. If he does, he will meet his death unprepared. In order to avoid this, a man has to live humbly, control his passions, keep his word, and be fair to both friends and enemies. A man should think about his earthly life, focus on the heavenly home that awaits him, and how to get there. CANTO XLV (WITH USURA), EZRA POUND In this canto we see Pound’s concern for the victims of usura. His real concern was that ordinary people should have shelter and food, access to work and be free to live and have a family, etc. According to Pound, all the evil of society comes from usury. Usury is the capital sin, since he believed it went against nature itself (contra natura). In the canto usura becomes personified, a malevolent beast or monster that vitiates everything it touches. It introduces itself between the bride and the groom. It is a sexless figure that prevents fertility and pleasure and that perverts the use of things; everything it touches becomes adulterated. The usurer wants always more than what he can decently use. Usura becomes the substantial manifestation of all hardships in life: due to usura there are so many injustices and inequalities. The only force that can defeat usura is the one of creativity (art). All the examples of painters he mentions are before the 15th century. Before that, art was not seen from a commercial point of view and it was not until the 16th century when the quality of art changed: usury was no longer considered a sin. Key words: • La Calumnia: hate, deceit, fraud, suspicion • Duccio: Italian architect CANTO I, EZRA POUND Canto I contains the longest stretch of narrative. It starts in media res with Ulysses (who represents the figure of the poet) descending to hell to talk to Tiresias, who will tell him the way back home to his kingdom of Itaca. Since ghosts are dead, in order to be able to talk to them, he has to offer them sacrifices. The metaphor of Ulysses offering his sacrifices to the ghost in order to get back home can be translated into Pound wanting to bring back to present the writers of the past. We could say that the cantos are an attempt to give life to the ghosts: they reflect a dialogue with the ghosts of the past. Pound thinks that the modern mind must establish contact with its forgotten beginnings. The Cantos are Pound’s attempt to restore a broken civilization that he finds in ruin and are therefore about the future that has to be approached through the past. He goes back to these luminous moments of the past and with these he tries to build up a new civilization. The quest in the cantos is the quest for a new civilization. Pound is not yearning for the past, but for a new sensibility. The canto ends with a vision of Aphrodite, a pagan goddess of beauty and love who is both dangerous and beneficial. The canto ends with the promise “so that”, which is a way of announcing that the poem will never be fulfilled since it is a kind of sailing after knowledge. The main characteristics of the canto are: • Chronology distorted: The poem will visit different times and spaces in no chronological order. • Shifts in voice: There are many voices in the cantos. First, Ulysses is talking, then the Homeric narrative is interrupted by Pound himself. After the dialogue of Pound talking to XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY In the first stanza, the persona who speaks, keeps his private world private. Only in the second stanza we become aware of what he’s doing and where he is: He’s lying in bed looking through the window and we see him as a father and a husband in his house (use of language of privacy). In the poem we can appreciate an inner realm and an outer realm: The physical shelter of the house is compared to the emotional shelter he receives from the family. We have a contrast between the private, inner, calm and protected environment inside the house and the wild, opened and cold landscape outside. The man is kind of attracted to both realms. This makes the reader think whether the man is happy to be inside with his family and his baby or not. The poet calls into question the degree of this happiness. Family is placid and calm, but at the same time boring. So, in “But my desires are thirty years behind all this”, we can appreciate that the speaker desires his youth and to be free. In this sense, the theme in this poem could be marriage against extramarital proclivities. Key words: • two unfortunates: two homeless people PORTRAIT OF A LADY, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS It is a love/lyric poem where the poet praises the body of a lady. We have to take into account that traditionally, the poet described the woman’s hair, eyes, mouth, etc. using metaphors; however in this poem, the lady inquires into the metaphors of the poem and spoils the poet’s description of her. There is a dialogue between a lover who praises the body of the lady and the lady who boycotts her lover’s answers and comments. She asks him about the meaning of the metaphors and that is why when we hear the poet’s voice, we perceive how irritated he is by this, since she interrupts the dynamic of the poem. His responses to her questions show that he is more interested in being the poet that in being the lover. The ladies beauties are mentioned because they provide a convenient rhyme: knees – breeze. Williams is playing with the traditional mechanism of love poems, defending that women are no longer happy to receive the poet’s praise and can no longer remain silent. The lady is aware that she becomes an object of praise, and this is why she refuses to be used and forgotten as an object for poetic purposes. By enquiring into the nature of metaphors, the lady commits a poetic sabotage. Key words: • Fragonard: the image of a young girl in a swing represents an idyllic scene about harmony between nature and culture. QUEEN ANNE’S LACE, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS The title, Queen Anne’s Lace, is the name of a very common field flower, which is white. It has minute blossoms and each blossom has a purple or black point in the centre. In this poem Williams compares a women to the Queen Anne’s Lace flower. He describes a woman sexually aroused achieving ecstasy. It seems as he is observing a woman experiencing sexual ecstasy. The poet starts the poem with a negation “her body is not so white”. Williams plays with the floral symbolism and metaphor: He describes the woman’s body in terms of a flower or field and emphasizes the whiteness of both, flower and woman. The art of description becomes a kind of drama in which he goes back and forth (“her body or a field of white carrot”). Through this poem Williams wants the reader to reconsider human sexuality and at the same time he tries to revive the ancient conception of the earth as a goddess. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY POEMS BY WALLACE STEVENS EARTHY ANECDOTE, WALLACE STEVENS There are two forces that attract and at the same time repel each other: the firecat, which is not a real animal but a supernatural beast made of fire bristles because of the bucks, and the bucks, whose emotions are determined by the firecat. When the firecat closes its bright eyes and sleeps, the energy disappears. The push and pull situation between the two forces stops. So, what we have here is a mixture of reality and imagination. It is very hard to capture reality. Imagination and reality are like two poles that attract and repel each other. They attempt to cross the gap that separates them. In some poems, Stevens seems to say that imagination is the only thing that there is in life; but in other poems he seems to say that reality is the only thing there is. So there is no progress between these two alternations. This relationship between the two forces creates a field of sensations, which, according to Stevens, is what poetry must be concerned with. Even though the space of the poem is objective, at the same time to speak of the earth is to speak of the mind. METAPHORS OF A MAGNIFICO, WALLACE STEVENS This poem experiments with the perplexities of imagination. The mind remains baffled in the presence of the old song that will not declare itself as to where we can find reality. Stevens changes the song by not telling what reality means but by showing us the possibilities of meaning. He explores the generative possibility of syntactic poetics, the possibility of generating meaning through syntax. By the repetition of syntactical units, language creates reality. According to Stevens it is very hard to get at reality because the mind wants to impose its order on reality, yet cannot do so. STUDY OF TWO PEARS, WALLACE STEVENS Through this poem Stevens abandons the idea of imagination having power over reality. This is one of the poems in which Stevens tells us that reality is what our senses tell us it is. In the poem, the petals have to be seen as what they are and not in terms of something else: they are neither nudes nor bottles; they resemble nothing else. That is why he describes the exact colour and shape of the pears. This is an item by item description, the thing itself. The poet is not a visionary, there is no reference to the transcendental; his symbols remain to the primitive senses of perception. Stevens wants to see reality as if it is not mediated by our imagination. DEATH OF A SOLDIER, WALLACE STEVENS It is a kind of seasonal contraction: The soldier is like an event in autumn. Death is absolute and without memorial. The soldiers will not rise after three days like Christ did. Any death is as final in itself as a moment of autumnal state. There’s nothing else after death than paralysis. THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM, WALLACE STEVENS The poem describes a funeral, in which the neighbors come over to the house in order to get the funeral ready. The dead person is washed and dressed. There are two realms or spaces: the kitchen and the bedroom of the old woman. On one hand, we have the bedroom in which the corpse of this woman lies; and on the other hand, we have the kitchen where the neighbors come to get the funeral ready and where they make ice-cream. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY The bedroom, which is poor (home-made sheets, the woman’s feet that protrude beyond the sheet, etc.), represents degradation; and the kitchen is the place of vulgarity (cigars, wenches, curds, etc.). In the poem, the emperor of ice-cream is a kind of pleasure-master: He’s muscular and he prepares tempting food. Stevens chooses life over death since the only other option is the corpse. This poem is an elegy, but Stevens changes the conception of this kind of composition. He didn’t believe in life after death and this is why he tries to show us how you represent the afterlife if you don’t believe in it. This is why his vision doesn’t reflect a separation of the soul, there’s no belief in any transcendental reality. By saying “Let be the finale of seem” he means that the only extraordinary thing will be pleasure and that’s the only power he recognizes over us. The vanishing of the Gods is the basis of Stevens’ poetry. But at the same time it is a moment of self-discovery for the man. He refuses to accept anything that is unreal. Key words: • wenches: women • curds: solid milk THE SNOWMAN, WALLACE STEVENS The whole poem is a search of a plain and pure reality. It is this attempt to get at reality beyond our mental impositions. We can see the desire of the speaker through the use of the infinitive. The snowman is not only the title of the poem but also an impersonal and neutral listener. Only the snowman, which is nothing himself, is free of mental fictions: only his mind is reduced to the neutral power of seeing. He’s stripped of all delusions, of nothing that is not there and nothing there is. Nothingness is equated with being. There’s no imagination involved this time, since we must avoid it in order to see reality. Reality is an extension of the self, so we can identify ourselves through reality, and therefore, through nature. The snowman destroys imagination in order to capture reality as it is. All the verbs are in the infinitive and have no attributes of person and time. TEA AT THE PALAZ OF HOON, WALLACE STEVENS The poem is a dramatic monologue which is the opposite of “The snowman”, since it is about imaginative fullness. In this poem Stevens says that imagination is reality and that we live in our mind and everything we can know is consciousness. Hoon is a royal figure (yellow = color of the gods) and the whole scene is that of the coronation of his imagination. He’s the beginning and origin of reality. Nothing from which he moves is outside him (what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself). Man is conceived like a God who brings the world into being. A DISILLUSIONMENT AT TEN O’CLOCK, WALLACE STEVENS Stevens wants to show us through this poem that seen through imagination, reality is monotonous. Middle class life is sad and colorless. If it is not colored by imagination it has no joy, which represents the death of imagination. In a world without imagination, no one is going to dream of baboons and periwinkles. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY EXAM QUESTIONS Definition of “image” by Ezra Pound. In A Retrospect, Pound defines image as “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”, which means that an image is not easily translatable into rational discourse. In Vorticism, Pound refers to image as “the poet’s pigment”. Imagists described the image as a vortex or nucleus through which ideas are constantly rushing. French poets that influenced the modernists The main French poets that influenced the modernists were Baudelaire, Laforc, Bourmon and Renbau. Philosophers that influenced the modernist poets At the turn of the century there’s an important change of values. Science cannot rend reality perfectly and cannot provide a clear description of the universe. If all our conceptual frameworks and intellectual formulations are only tools that serve existing needs, they are not absolute and can be discarded by others. Scientific knowledge is instrumental but it cannot provide the ultimate order of reality. Our conceptual features are not copies of eternal forms. What can provide us with a description of reality then? Scientific constructs cannot be identified with reality itself. There is a need for other terms to describe reality. All the philosophers convey on the idea that our consciousness is based on mechanism, enable us very efficient but they allienate us from our deeper mental processes. Philosophers such as Nietzsche, William James, Bergson or Bradley came up with different notions to answer this question: • Nietzsche: Chaos of Sensations. According to Nietzsche, life is an independent mass of fleeting sensations. Life is a flux that is eternally changing. Life is will to power, the creation of new modes of life without a sense of unit. There’s no first cause and no final goal. He goes against the neoplatonic framework (preexistence order of reality: the preexistence of notions such as truth or beauty). We have to adjust to a model and we cannot think by ourselves (be creative). Nietzsche says there is no preexistence order of reality. So, Nietzsche deconstructs this notion of good and evil (good and evil do not exist). It subordinates our creative imagination to transcendent beauty. There is no metaphysical realm beyond appearance. For him, we ourselves are the only source of good, truth and beauty. We are free to shape our own world to create new forms and new meaning. • William James: Stream of Consciousness. William James is the father of pragmatism. He stresses the practical function of knowledge. Truth for him is an instrument to adapt to reality and control reality. For him, believe is temporal and practical. Truth is that which works. He gives priority to the actual overfixed principles. He is against the absolute. He is also aware that a deterministic universe leads to despair. Purposelessness can drive us to suicide. There is life enhancing and denying illusions (illusions that make our life better). If existence is purposeless, people despair. Even though they are not true, let’s hold on to ideas like “the divine” because they make our lives better. But for him life is flux and change and the ultimate reality is the “stream of consciousness”. He describes consciousness as an unbroken flow. Frost was very much influenced by William James. • Bergson: Real Duration. Real duration is the dynamic temporality of our deep psychic life. Our past exists in the present and past, present and future coexist. Reality is a constant flux and duration is a unity. At the same time it is always changing. For Bergson the real duration evokes cosmic vital impulse “élan vital”, evolution towards higher human awareness. It is the idea that any phenomena in time and space will be implicit in another phenomenon in time and space. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY Bergson says that the perception of the same object is never the same since it is colored by our experiences of the past (the tree is never the same every time we look at it). We can, however, never get at the truth of reality viewing it from the outside according to Bergson. That is, we can become aware of duration only through intuition. Bergson distinguished between time as we actually experience it, lived time – which he called ‘real duration’ – and the mechanistic time of science or mathematics. These are some of Bergson’s principles: − ultimate reality is changing, rather than unchanging − ultimate reality is knowable by direct intuition − intellect and intuition provide two different kinds of knowledge, which can be integrated to produce a unified knowledge of reality − intellectual knowledge is relative knowledge, intuitive knowledge is absolute knowledge − intuition is a direct perception and experience of the continuous flow of reality, without the use of any intellectual concepts − the flow of time as real duration can be experienced only by intuition • Bradley: Immediate Experience. • Max Stirner: Egoism and extreme individualism. He has a very extreme conception of egoism. He says that the only real thing is the “ego”. The goal is the achievement of egoism. This kind of egoism does away with all moral conventions. In order to achieve this break with tradition you have to e very self-conscious, self-willed. This cult of egoism has also to do with the cult of subjectivity. When exacerbated egoism, you are encapsulated in your own self. The willful individual became the sole source of truth. Religion and morality drop from our consideration when we exacerbate subjectivity and egoism. This exacerbated egoism and subjectivity is an escape from a massed culture. The ideogramatic method (Haiku) The ideogramatic method consists of the juxtaposition and relation of signs or images. It puts together the concrete and the abstract. The Japanese alphabet, for instance, roots abstract notions to concrete objects. The Haikus make use of this idea. Haikus are brief poems composed of 3 lines and 17 syllables. They are precise and there’s nothing superfluous or decorative in them since they avoid ornamental elements and generalizations. For the Haiku poet a bird is a bird, rain is rain, the thing is what it is. It uses simple language. Silence is an eloquent strategy in the Haiku. Haikus provide a picture of the reality as it is smelled, touched or viewed through our senses. The world is known through direct experience. They focus on one particular moment and capture a moment of eternity. It represents a moment in time that is the eternal and dwells with timelessness. Each Haiku is a kind of revelation and provides insight into the truth (the true nature of things) that lies beyond time and space. Haikus are linked to the “zen” philosophy (everything is momentary). There is no “I” in these poems. For the Haiku poet, there’s no “ego”. The poet manages to express his inner feelings getting rid of his “ego”. Haikus are built on a paradox: time-timelessness, light-darkness, silence-sound, etc. It is always about nature and it always contains a word that refers to a season, which sometimes is simply mentioned. Mythical Method in Eliot’s theory Eliot states in his essay Ulysses, order and myth that Joyce (Ulysses) is the discoverer of a new artistic technique which is as important as scientific discovery and he calls the “Mythical method”. He defined this concept as a “continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity” which implied “a way of controlling, ordering and giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history”. This method is aimed to give structure to the text and to otherwise disconnected images and provide them with meaning. XX CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY Definition of the “Objective Correlative” by Eliot This is a term coined by Eliot. He developed his theory about the objective correlative and gave a definition of it in his essay Hamlet: “the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative” which is “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” Definition of “Vortex” A radiant note or cluster. Modernist Journals • Poetry Harriet Monroe founds this journal in 1912 but she needs to find a European editor in order to expand. This editor will be Pound. This journal became an alternative journal to the poetry prevailing at the time. There we find the first poetic manifestoes. • The Egoist This journal was dedicated to the emancipation of women. Joyce’s Portrait of a Young Artist was published here, as well as part of the Ulysses. • The Little Review This journal was founded in 1914 and run by two women and also based in Chicago. The slogan of the journal was “Making no compromises with public taste”. It also published art work (surrealism). Its contributions were Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Picasso, etc. • The Criterion This is the one journal that marks the institutionalization of Modernism. • Blast • The Dial This journal published “the Waste Land” by Eliot for the first time. • The new Age This journal based in London, is a socialist journal on economics. Pound published many of his essays here. • Vanity Fair This journal was very avant-garde” (1914-1936) All these journals are not antagonists. They share common ideas of modernism. They rose up and very frequently faded away in a short period of time. They wanted to shock their audiences and were usually addressed to young artists. They were not polite to their audiences and their aim was “to purge poetry of regular meter, beauty and God”.