Summary:

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (1905) called the world in which we live into question.  Observation was no longer considered the most effective way to know something; emphasis shifted from objective to subjective experience.  Literary forms of the past, such as Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism, were heavily dependent on objective observation, and therefore they were rendered incapable of representing this new world.  In response, Modernism was developed, which emphasized the subjectivity of the viewer, literary experimentation, the questioning of literary tradition along with fragmentation of the arts, and were marked by a kind of primitivism.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was a forerunner in the Modernist movement, exemplified by his motto "Make it new!" Along with H.D. & Richard Aldington, he introduced the Imagist movement in poetry in A Retrospect (1918). The principles of Imagism were

1. Direct treatment of the thing 
2. Concise language
3. Musicality (rejection of traditional poetic meter)

Imagism was created to escape "the flaccid varieties" of the past and aimed to create experience through observation of an object, by examining and concentrating on the object itself.  Pound emphasized the idea of defamiliarization of objects, the importance of formulating a sudden experience, and capturing brief moments, which are well represented in his poem "In a Station of the Metro" (1913), through direct treatment and concise language. 

The poetry of Robert Frost (1874-1963) is often seen as a continuation of Regionalism, depicting images of the New England region.  It is colloquial, accessible and understandable (most of his work is written in blank verse).  Frost's high regard for meter, rhythm and rhyme goes against the principles of Modernism, but his work is still evidently self-aware of the new world in which it was published, as seen in "Mending Wall" (1914), in which Frost rejects the old ideas of the neighbor.

Word count: 300

Passages:

"In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough." - (Norton, p. 1482)

• The quick snapshot of the scene captured in this poem provides a tactile sense of the image.  The 27 syllables in this poem are tightly controlled.  This poem combines the incongruity of nature (like in Haiku) with people.  The semicolon in the second line governs the metaphor of the poem by providing a mark of equivalency between the images presented.
• The poem adheres to the principles of the Modernist movement: it is experimental, calls traditional forms into question and has a kind of musicality to it.

"Good fences make good neighbors." - (Norton, p. 1390)

• Walls and fences serve two purposes: to seperate and unite. They exist "between" neighbors, as the speaker tells us in lines 13-15:
  • And on a day we meet to walk the line / And set the wall between us once again. / We keep the wall between us as we go. 
• The speaker agrees with his neighbor's sentiment, but not with its origin: it is a perspective that has been passed down from his father.  His neighbor's dependence on old, received wisdom to navigate the world is frustrating to the speaker.
• The repetition of this statement in lines 27, 30, and 45 of the poem highlights this frustration, as does the poem itself, which does not use any new or innovative forms but still expresses awareness of the new world in which it exists.

Key Terms:

Modernism- literary movement chacterized by subjectivity (stream of consciousness), experimentation (new forms for new worlds), questioning of literary tradition, and primitivism

Imagism- new literary movement in poetry during the Modernist movement characterized by direct treatment of the thing, concise and sharp language, and musicality.  It focuses on the object itself as the subject and depicts a sudden experience or revelation after an observation.  Williams describes it as "No ideas but in things."

vorticism- direct and bare presentation with some principle of dynamism and energy in the image.

defamiliarization- the purpose of Imagism; the act of taking something ordinary and presenting it in a way that creates a new experience of the object. 

blank verse- a form of poetry consisting unrhymed iambic pentameter

Other Materials

Lecture slides