21 - Modernist Poetry

Summary

The exact chronological and geographical boundaries of modernism and modernity are matters of long-standing critical dispute. This chapter makes no pretense to retheorize them, but rather, works within a widely accepted framework for what constitutes the modernist period, from mid-nineteenth-century France to the beginning of the Second World War. The scope is limited to French, German, and English poetry written in Western Europe and the United States. The chapter deals with German modernism by focusing on Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke. It considers Hart Crane's reaction to the high modernist aesthetic and Amy Lowell's fraught interaction with it. The chapter examines the American avatars of what has come to be known as "international" or "high" modernism, by exploring HD Ezra Pound, and TS Eliot. It looks at the Harlem Renaissance poetry of Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. Finally, the chapter discusses the British modernism of DH Lawrence and WH Auden.