Imagism, Vorticism; Ezra Pound, H.D., Marianne Moore

( 2 0 ) M o d e r n i s m i n P o e t r y (Imagism, Vorticism; Ezra Pound, H.D., Marianne Moore)

H i s t o r i c a l B a c k g r o u n d ( W W I + ) - the infl. of politics upon the arts: GB ceases to be the foremost colonial power, loses colonies, and evokes a colonial sensibility in lit. - the infl. of WW I: a global impact, introd. the themes of depression, frustration, and inability to return to a non-military life – the novels of E. Hemingway, e. e. cummings, & oth. - a rise of secularism, a turn away from the fixed beliefs, and a new belief in the ability of scientists and artists to replace church in explaining the reality - artists, critics, and theologians attempt to come to terms with scientific inventions and with the theories of C. Darwin, S. Freud, and Karl Jung -  the relativity of culture

M o d e r n i s m ( 1 9 2 0 s – 3 0 s ) - prominent shortly before WW I and during the inter-war period - reject the previous modes of culture and dismisses the establ. lit. styles - experiments in form and style: (a) prose: low life themes, non-mimetic [= indirect] repres. of reality, complexity in terms of plot, and conc. with the language, how to use it, and with writing itself (b) poetry: no more romantic, prophetic, beautiful, and flowery x but: sceptic, inventive, and original - breaks away from establ. rules, traditions, and conventions to explore new fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe - many authors dissatisfied with the development of the Am. culture >> chose to become lit. expatriates in the Eur. culture: G. Stein, T. S. Eliot, and E. Pound -  each of the above gave impulses to innovate lit. and language x but: with a different approach

I m a g i s m ( 1 9 1 0 s ) - orig. inspired by T. E. Hulme (1908), initiated and promoted by E. Pound - prominent immediately before WW I - the image based poetry: (a) insists on a hard and clear image (b) direct, mimetic, photography-like treatment of the theme (c) condensed, as short as possible, no extra words (d) the language of everyday speech, no abstract phrases (e) attentive to the rhythm, musical, not metrical (f) a complete freedom in subject matter - > Des Imagistes (1914): the 1st imagist anthology - the manifesto got assimilated into Am. poetry soon, important until now

V o r t i c i s m ( 1 9 1 0 s ) - orig. inspired by the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis’s (1912) magazine the Blast [= ‘wind blast’ or ‘explosion’], initiated and promoted by E. Pound - the name: from vortex [= ‘whirl’], the symbol of high energy and movement - resembles action and movement - connects the poetry with the cubist painting

E z r a P o u n d ( 1 8 8 5 – 1 9 7 2 ) - a poet, lit. critic, social critic, transl, and lit. entrepreneur - began to transform E lit. immediately after his moving to London = ‘the place for poetry’ (1908) - initiated the modernist rev. in E poetry and prose - exported the modernist rev. to Am.: a corresponding ed. for Harriet Monro’s Chicago-based Poetry - founded the Imagist movement: insisted on the ‘luminous detail’ – see his “In a Station of the Metro”, an unexplained juxtaposition = the immediacy of reality - founded the Vorticist movement: inspired by the pictographical characters of the Chinese poetry, insisted on the concept of poetry as a succession of these ‘concrete pictures’ - attempted to aid D. H. Lawrence, J. Joyce, T. S. Eliot, W. C. Williams, R. Frost, E. Hemingway, & oth., also ed. T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land - adopted traditional forms and rendered them in a new way: not to break with the past x but: to modernise the past, ‘make it new’ - claimed a poem must be vitally alive x but: his early poetry often lapsed into ‘literaryism’ - < the lit. traditions of the classics, the medieval Eur., the ancient Chinese haiku, and the 18th c. Am. Canzoni (1911): - made F. M. Fox roll on the floor in mock horror at its ‘literaryism’ Personae (1909): - possibly his finest coll. Cathay (1915): - a transl. from Chinese Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Life and Contacts (1920): - a reaction to the death of his friend, the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Bryeska, at the WW I front in - calls the ‘civilisation’ ‘an old bitch’ The Cantos: - an epic to bridge the ancient x modern cultures - a long, unending, and encyclopaedic poem in open form and free verse - incl. all from personal anecdotes to lit. allusions: employs the technique of cryptic, fragmented, and highly allusive references - concentrates on a sentence, avoids the narrative structure, and proves himself an obscure and never boring master of the modern language -  W. Whitman (= ‘the pig-headed father’ of his “Pact”): (a) spent the bulk of his career on a long poem in the Whitmanesque tradition (Cantos) (b) C.  W.’s “Song of Myself”: contain multitudes of ideas, insights, characters, events, etc., etc. The Pisan Cantos: - himself consid. his best poems - composed as a prisoner in an Am. camp for the prisoners of war in Ita. at the end of WW II - (moved to Ita. in the inter-war period, became obsessed with his missionary role as a social critic against materialism and capitalism, and supported Fascism, incl. anti-Semitism)  also wrote following poems of distinction:

H ( i l d a ) D ( o o l i t t l e ) ( 1 8 8 6 – 1 9 6 1 ) - pioneered the modernist poetry: contrib. to Imagism, Vorticism, & oth. such movements - conc. with the experience of a woman and the psyche adrift in a violent and insecure reality - felt the tension btw the private x public sphere, submission x resistance, compliance x rebellion - followed E. Pound to En. with a lady who was in love with P. and whom she was in love with > created a pattern of emotionally charged and somewhat restrained bisexuality working for her - used images from nature: the austere landscapes of sea, sand, and wind x the exotic flowers, shells, and jewellery - contrasted sterility x fruitfulness, intellect x passion, control x abandon, grief x joy - an imagist: (a) vivid phrasing, compelling imagery, no abstraction, and no generalisation (b) free verse, and a short poetic line Sea Garden (1916): a coll. of her poems publ. orig. in little magazines and anthologies Hymen (1921): a coll. of her poems in a new boldly meditative style Helen in Egypt (1961): an epic poem inspired by Gr. poetry and Homer’s Helen of his Iliad

M a r i a n n e M o o r e ( 1 8 8 7 – 1 9 7 2 ) - promoted the modernist poetry: re-establ. and ed. the orig. Transcendentalist magazine The Dial as an avant-garde magazine - < E. Dickinson: though D. establ. only in her own 20s - < E relig. writers: grew up in strict Presbyterianism - felt the tension btw the relig. x the multiplicity and aesthetic diversity of life - conc. with the essence of poetry, and the relationship btw poetry x reality - characteristic by thematic simplicity (nature, animals, etc.) x but: formal precision - concentrated on the stanzas, paid attention to the visual side, and dismissed the rhymes - applied the rules of imagism to the Am. experience x but: frequently used sarcasm – see her “England”, celebrated x doubted Am. - introd. the ‘syllabic count’, based on the Rom. languages: measured verse by the number of syllables in each line (not by stress or quantity), regardless whether stressed or unstressed - frequently quoted  made her poems mosaics or collages of many pieces arranged to fit together Poems (1924): her 1st coll. of poems, publ. without her knowledge or permission by H. D. Observations (1921): a coll. of poems incl. mostly reprints from the former