Modernist Love Poems

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Modernist Love Poems
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Modernist Poetry

• Fragmented
• Expressed demolished or anguished I
• Used compressed language
• Innovative in its lack of meter
• No idea but in things -- Williams
• Make it new --Pound

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T.S. Eliot

• Born in St. Louis, educated at Harvard, became
  and English subject
• Partnered with Pound in revising notions of
  poetic tradition
• Brilliant scholar of philosophy and languages
• Considered effete by William Carlos Williams

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Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

• Opens with passage from Dante
• (1) A passage from Dante Alghieri's Inferno
  (Canto 27, lines 61-66) "If I thought that I was
  replying to someone who would ever return to the
  world, this flame would cease to flicker. But
  since no one ever returns from these depths
  alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer
  you without fear of infamy."

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Audio recording of Eliot reading the poem

• http//static.salon.com/mp3s/eliot1.mp3

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Prufrock

• What is Prufrocks problem?
• Would you characterize this poem as a lyric poem?
  Why or why not?
• Does it seem American? Why/why not?

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William Carlos Williams

• Disliked Pound and Eliots emigration to Europe
• Found their view of poetry elitist
• Chose to stay in Rutherford NJ to be a baby
  doctor
• Thought hed rather write about the people he
  knew than about allusions, scholarly inspiration,
  etc.

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Williams aesthetic

• Theocritus autochthonous i.e. a joining of
  soul, soil, and language
• Ironic interpretation of autochthonous as well
  in that he knew his townspeople fell short of the
  Romantic ideal of country folk
• Political wanted to express the common persons
  self-destructive rage and desire.
• Dance union of body, music, and place.

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Love Song

• How do WCWs strategies differ from Eliots?
• What does yellow mean here compared with in
  Prufrock?
• Is Williams a lyric poet? Why or why not?

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Hilda Doolittle AKA H.D.

• Attended Upenn where she befriended WCW.
• Major modernist poet and imagist (unrhymed poetry
  with no meter and no explanation).
• Engaged to Ezra Pound for a while.
• Used image of Helen the Greek goddess in her poems

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Song by HD

• Can an imagist poem by lyrical?