Modernism 1890s-1939

• Imagist Movement• The Lost Generation • Harlem Renaissance

• Charles Darwin Origin of Species (1859)• Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams

(1899) • Albert Einstein Special Theory of Relativity

(1905)• Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinksy Rite of Spri

ng (1913) [what they are used to]

• Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)• Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) • World War I (1914)• Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Le Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

Guernica (1937)

Falling Water

Georgia O’Keeffe, a

quest for the “Great

American Thing”

Pineapple Bud1939

American Modernism

• Experimentation: content and form• Fragmentation: viewpoint, imagery,

chronology, experience• Dislocation: cultural (expats, immigrants /

Southern Blacks to urban north, and spiritual)• Reconfiguration: new meanings out of chaos,

truth in the relative world

Imagism Movement’s Three Principles Pound, Lowell, Aldington, Doolittle

From an Imagist Manifesto (1912):

1 To use the language of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.

2 We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.

3 Absolute freedom in the choice of subject.

4 To present an image. We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.

5 To produce a poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

6 Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

Image vs. Description

IMAGES present us with objectives/ events,

an experience we should feel; it must register on readers’ imaginations and emotions and senses

DESCRIPTIONtells us about an object/event;

gives us information we should know

Amy Lowell

“To create new rhythms—as the expression of new moods—and not to copy old rhythms which merely echo old moods…cadence means a new idea.”

Ezra Pound (1885-1972):

• “Make it New”• “Literature is news that stays news.”• “It is better to present one image in a lifetime

than to produce voluminous works.”• “Good writers are those who keep the language

efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.”

• “An image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.”

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

William Carlos Williams(1883-1963)

• “No ideas but in things”• “It is difficult

To get the news from poems Yet men die miserably every day For lack Of what is found there.”

• “Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to perfect economy.”

“The Red Wheel Barrow” (1923)William Carlos Williams

so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens

“A Pact” by Ezra Pound

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman—I have detested you long enough.I come to you as a grown childWho has had a pig-headed father;I am old enough now to make friends.It was you that broke the new wood,Now is a time for carving.We have one sap and one root—Let there be commerce between us.