Modernism
The Modernist era holds sway from the end of World War I with the publication of T. S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" until it is replaced with Postmodernism during the late 1950s with Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” The chief Modernist poets are W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden.
Modernist poets sought to write a poetry that distinguishes itself from the traditional poetry of the past. They began to eschew rime; they began to portray life as a vast spiritual desert. Some tried to invent their own mythology and religion.
Influenced by a widespread failure to understand scientific advancement of their era, many began to think that the human being was a super-animal instead of child of God. Thus, they began to question the value and purpose of religion. Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is often considered the prototypical melancholy that grasped the Modernists, who felt that religious faith had failed mankind and only art could take its place.
W. B. Yeats 1865-1939
Yeats’ major claim to the Modernist label results from his attempt to create his own mythology; although he studied Irish mythology and fables, he followed his own idiosyncratic line of thinking that he attempted to outline in his tract called A Vision. This work is a delicious dissonance of disingenuous drivel. Yeats’ reputation was saved by the fact that he did condescend to write a substantial number of genuine poems.
Ezra Pound 1885-1972
Most credit for the founding of the movement known as Modernism is widely bestowed on Ezra Pound. His main Modernist offering, however, is imagism, which is in actuality a thoroughly traditional phenomenon, but his insistence that poets should "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome," heralded the proliferation of “free verse,” a thoroughly Modernist phenomenon.
T. S. Eliot 1888-1965
T. S. Eliot’s poetry reflects the spiritual dryness that gripped poets between the two World Wars. His pathetic yet comical character, J. Alfred Prufrock, demonstrates the paradox of contemporary man during this period. And The Waste Land is a virtual manifesto of the Modernist creed of fragmentation accompanied with the usual spiritual degeneration; although at the end there is hope. Despite the usual emphasis on the agnosticism and atheism that seized many poets, T. S. Eliot did not lose religious faith. He became a staunch member of the Church of England.
W. H. Auden 1907-1973
Of this group of so-called Modernists, Auden is the least Modernist. It may be noted that he is also the youngest: 42 years younger than Yeats, 22 years younger than Pound, and 19 years younger than Eliot. If there were a different classification between Modernism and Postmodernism, that’s where Auden would possibly be.
Nevertheless, at least in some of his work, Auden does reveal a few peccadilloes in common with the Modernists—he concentrates on negativity: “You shall love your crooked neighbour / With your crooked heart," “About suffering, they were never wrong, / The Old Masters.” However, notice at the same time, both poems are rimed, and they do broach the subject of love.
His “Unknown Citizen” certainly offers a Modernist outlook, but again it is rimed, and it attempts offer a call to action, instead of merely bemoaning events.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
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