A Companion to Modernist Poetry
Ed. David E. Chinitz & Gail McDonald

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

Cloth $195.00 (ISBN 978-0-4706-5981-6) Spring 2014
 

A Companion to Modernist Poetry presents contemporary approaches to modernist poetry in a uniquely in-depth and accessible text. The first section of the volume reflects the attention to historical and cultural context that has been especially fruitful in recent scholarship. The second section focuses on various movements and groupings of poets, placing writers in literary history and indicating the currents and countercurrents whose interaction generated the category of modernism as it is now broadly conceived. The third section traces the arcs of twenty-one poets' careers, illustrated by analyses of key works.

The Companion thus offers breadth in its presentation of historical and literary contexts and depth in its attention to individual poets; it brings recent scholarship to bear on the subject of modernist poetry while also providing guidance on poets who are historically important and who are likely to appear on syllabi and to attract critical interest for many years to come.

Edited by two highly respected and notable critics in the field, A Comapnion to Modernist Poetry boasts a varied list of contributors who have produced an intense, focused study of modernist poetry.

Reviews

 

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction (David E. Chinitz and Gail McDonald)

1. Rhythm, Form, and Diction in Modernist Poetry (Michael H. Whitworth)

PART I: INFLUENCES AND INSTITUTIONS

2. Urbanism (Julia E. Daniel)

3. The Visual Arts (Leonard Diepeveen)

4. Music (Brad Bucknell)

5. Fiction (John Xiros Cooper)

6. Science and Technology (Katy Price)

7. Popular Culture (Michael Coyle)

8. Religion: Orthodoxies and Alternatives (Lara Vetter)

9. Politics (Sascha Bru)

10. War and Empire (Vincent Sherry)

11. Psychology and Sexuality (Gabrielle McIntire)

12. Symbolism and Decadence (Barry J. Faulk)

13. The European Avant-Garde (Michael Levenson)

14. Little Magazines (Suzanne W. Churchill)

15. Modernist Criticism (Chris Baldick)

PART II: GROUPS AND GROUPINGS

16. The Georgian Poets and the Genteel Tradition (Meredith Martin and Erin Kappeler)

17. The New Poetry (John Timberman Newcomb)

18. Poetry of the Great War (Eve C. Sorum)

19. The Harlem Renaissance (Karen Jackson Ford)

20. The Fugitives (Gail McDonald)

21. Modernist Women Poets (Miranda Hickman)

22. Left Poetry (Walter Kalaidjian)

23. Objectivism (Stephen Cope)

24. World Modernist Poetry in English (Omaar Hena)

25. Modernism: The Next Generation (Susan Rosenbaum)

PART III: POETS

26. Thomas Hardy (Tim Armstrong)

27. W. B. Yeats (Steven Matthews)

28. Gertrude Stein (Susan Holbrook)

29. Robert Frost (Robert Faggen)

30. Wallace Stevens (Malcolm Woodland)

31. Mina Loy (Cristanne Miller)

32. William Carlos Williams (Christopher MacGowan)

33. D. H. Lawrence (Holly A. Laird)

34. Ezra Pouind (Rebecca Beasley)

35. H.D. (Helen Sword)

36 . Marianne Moore (Robin G. Schulze)

37. T. S. Eliot (Anthony Cuda)

38. Claude McKay (William J. Maxwell)

39. Edna St. Vincent Millay (Melissa Bradshaw)

40. Hugh MacDiarmid (Margery Palmer McCulloch)

41. E. E. Cummings (Michael Webster)

42. David Jones (Thomas Dilworth)

43. Melvin Tolson (Kathy Lou Schultz)

44. Hart Crane (Sunny Stalter-Pace)

45. Langston Hughes (David E. Chinitz)

46. W. H. Auden (Stan Smith)

CONCLUSION: MODERNIST POETRY TODAY

47. Contemporary Critical Trends (Matthew Hofer)

Index