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“Companions, introductions, anthologies and other aids […]”, the opening gambit of the editors in their Introduction to this Companion immediately struck a chord for this reviewer. I recall that a few years ago, I reviewed The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry (Davis and Jenkins, 2007), and here I am with another Companion. I should feel grateful for so much literary companionship. This offering from Wiley Blackwell is a substantial volume and, given its hardback status in print and price tag, one can assume it is targeted at the library market. As is the case for other titles in this series the volume is well presented physically and in its arrangement of subject matter. The Introduction points out that the Companion offers both breadth and depth of coverage, and inspection of the contents reveals this to be an accurate description. A straightforward layout makes this book easy to navigate, something which undergraduate university students are likely to particularly welcome. It begins with the usual Notes on Contributors who are, as is customary, academics with expertise in the field on which their contribution focuses. This is followed by the Introduction by the Editors, again both experts in the field, and an initial chapter on Rhythm, Form and Diction in Modernist Poetry. These preliminary chapters clearly set out the approach to modernism (broadly, historical) and poetry (Anglophone) as understood for the context of this Companion. The volume is then divided into three parts, which create the sense of breadth and depth, starting with what we might consider to be the wide angle view of Influences and Institutions in Part I, moving to a closer perspective in Part II Groups and Grouping, with finally the “close up” of Part III where the work of individual poets is presented. This range of approaches and the variation this achieves encompassed in one volume is a major component of the success of this title: it provides students, and indeed, a general reader, with context and close consideration of individual poets. The 14 chapters in Part I cover: Urbanism, The Visual Arts, Music, Fiction,
Science and Technology, Popular Culture, Religion, Politics, War and Empire,
Psychology and Sexuality, Symbolism and Decadence, The European Avant-Garde,
Little Magazines and Modernist Criticism. Each of these speaks clearly
from and to directions of current literary scholarship. The next ten chapters,
Chapters 16 to 25, focus on groupings of poets and in so doing contextualize
their work in literary history. This section stretches Modernism to include
its predecessors or earliest stages in a chapter on the Georgian Poets
and the Genteel Tradition, and ends with the chapter | Modernism: The Next Generation. In-between these poles, groupings include categories one would expect to find in an historical account: The New Poetry, Poetry of the Great War, The Harlem Renaissance, The Fugitives, Modernist Women Poets, Left Poetry, Objectivism and World Modernist Poetry in English. The third and final Part comprises 21 chapters, each focusing on the work of one poet. These are primarily the “high” modernist poets, major poets whose names are synonymous with modernism: Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, H.D., Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, Claude McKay, Edna St Vincent Millay, Hugh MacDiarmid, E.E. Cummings, David Jones, Melvin Tolson, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes and W.H. Auden. Each chapter provides a concise introduction and overview of the poet’s work, followed by either References or References and Further Reading. Each chapter and set of References provides a good starting point for students seeking to understand the work of these challenging poets. The Companion ends with a chapter which stands alone, in a final section, Modernist Poetry Today, presented as a Conclusion. This chapter looks at Contemporary Critical Trends and provides an excellent overview of current thinking on reading strategies. Changes in reading practices and strategies are given their historical context and current tactics are presented under the subheadings Literal Reading, Differential Reading, Radical Reading, Distant Reading, The Commitment to Form, Social Philology and Sound, and Constructivist and Cultural Poetics. It is interesting to find a Conclusion which interrogates and queries the function of literary criticism and this doubtless reflects the debates along these lines in the academic community. It is amusing to read that “There are, after all, better ways to get information than interpreting and analyzing poems […]” (p. 576), preceding a final conclusion asserting the real value and authority of poetry. The very good Index, of 26 pages, supports the clear, concise and easily navigable layout of this title. It is difficult to imagine how a single volume could provide a more straightforward and yet thorough insight into the larger scene of modernism and the detail of individual poets’ work. This Companion is thoroughly recommended for university libraries supporting degree programmes in English literature or American literature and public libraries seeking contemporary scholarship to augment their poetry collections. Linda Kemp | |||