M/C [Media/Culture] Reviews
2015
 

An exact definition of modernist poetry and the chronological time frame of the movement in the landscape of literature are difficult to pin down. Those engaged with getting to grips with studies relating to the modernist movement will welcome this valuable A Companion to Modernist Poetry reference book. It follows the traditional Blackwell companions in literature and culture and provides a comprehensive coverage of the historical and literary aspects of modernist poetry. It includes recent academic contributions on various dimensions of the topic and also in depth insights into twenty noted representative modernist poets.

The editors of the book, David E. Chinitz and Gail McDonald, give an introduction which outlines the aims of the companion. They stress that in the last half century recent scholarship has extended the parameters of the historical and literary context by which modernist poetry was formerly viewed.

It is interesting to note that David E. Chinitz, Professor of English at Loyola University, Chicago is also president of the Modernist Studies Association. He is well published and much of his writing includes a focus on poet T.S. Eliot. Across the Atlantic, Gail McDonald teaches at Goldsmiths College, University of London U.K. She is also a founder and past president of the Modernist Studies Association and Director of the T. S. Eliot International Summer School. As expected, their collaboration ensures a balanced intellectual and passionate approach. It is also no surprise that the work and influence of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (both well established as modernist poets) comes to light in many of the pages.

'Rhythm form and Diction in Modernist Poetry’ by Michael H. Whitworth is the first contribution. It is well placed to deal initially with the technical issue of poetic form – always a discussion focus in any discussion about Modernist poetry. Whitworth brings forward valuable material in ‘Breaking the Pentameter and Other Myths’ (5) and 'Modern Metrical Practices' (6). He suggests that modernist poems having broken with the rigidity of the nineteenth century were not all formless and open. He uses extracts from Eliot’s essays to support this. He concludes his piece on ‘Modernity and the Inexplicable’ with meaningful words:

While no single idea lies behind modernist approaches to poetic form ... by drawing on a wealth of inherited techniques, and adapting them to new needs they make it new, and by evading systemization, they create new forms that retain their freshness (18).

The studies by forty seven accomplished international contributors are featured in the 600pages. There are three main divisions following the introductions mentioned above.

Part 1 gives the robust volume 15 diverse takes on the influences and institutions that have shaped modernist poetry.

Part 2. Nine contributions covering religion, politics, urbanism, science and technology are included as well as the groups and groupings of poets that have evolved within the movement.

Part 3. This section [focuses on] 21 highly acclaimed and influential Modernist Poets. Whilst not totally biographical the career of each is traced to illustrate the development and achievement of the poet. This is linked to their works which are representative and commonly taught in poetry study.

Whilst each section gives a solid reference list for further study and investigation there will be readers like this reviewer who find true companionship with texts by delving into pages related to personal favourite poets or life interests. ‘The Visual Arts’ by Leonard Dieperveen (35), ‘Music’ by Brad Bucknell

 

(48) and ‘Popular Culture’ by Michael Coyle (81) fitted comfortably with the view that all the arts are interrelated. A later section by Michael Levenson, 'The European Avant- Garde’ (157), covers influences from Symbolism in the last decades of the nineteenth century through Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism and into Surrealism. ‘Politics’ by Sascha Bru (107) included an interesting piece on language which certainly assisted understanding. She [sic] stated that:

Poets around the turn of the twentieth century already were scattered to the four winds – to anarchism and nationalism, to suffragism and religious reaction – and these currents to a large extent continued to shape the political palette for later modernist writers entering the arena of poetry.

Vincent Sherry in ‘War and Empire’ (120) reminds us that: ‘Dispositions do not shift on the prompt of round chronological numbers.’ He also suggests (123) that ‘The defining timeliness of modernism comes more urgently thus in the images of a dying empire and the lexicon of literary decadence.’

Hooray for Gabrielle McIntire. She is one contributor who does dare to place Modernist Poetry in a proposed time frame. Opening ‘The New Matrix of Psychology and Sexuality’ (132):

‘What we might dare to call, in retrospect the modernist era – which I want to designate as occurring roughly between 1890 and 1945 – witnessed the emergence and maturation of the new field of psychology alongside the unprecedented changes in attitude to sex and sexual identities.’

McIntie adds that a simultaneous and dramatic expansion of the vocabulary for speaking about sex, sexuality, gender and psychology and poetry is amongst the first body of literature to engage this. Writers including Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust and also poets like Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, Hilda Dolittle and W.H. Auden represented in this book identified in some way with sexual [and] gender orientation.

One of the most enlightening chapters in this companion book is ‘Little Magazines’ by Suzanne W. Churchill. This enables today’s writer and reader to identify with the emergence development and growth of a twentieth century literary landscape transformed by technological advances. She includes amongst these (174): ‘printing and paper production, growth of a modern advertising industry, rising literary rates, efficient transportation systems.’ A massive sea of periodicals emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century. She states that modernist poetry survived and was kept afloat by periodicals of all sizes. It is an interesting note that the London based Poetry Society and the Poetry Society of America were both formed in 1909 to protect an art that seemed in danger of extinction.

The Harlem Renaissance section by Karen Jackson Ford (234) caught attention. It is both informative and insightful reminding readers that today’s hip-hop and jazz poetry has come a long way. Summed up, we can follow the collective direction of the Harlem Renaissance as leading African -American poets to the Black Arts Movement. Its collective direction in turn led a new generation to the New Black Aesthetic poetry of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and eventually to a wide spectrum of poetic means.

The book itself closes with ‘Modernist Poetry Today’ by Matthew Hofer. This is a conclusion that examines the contemporary criticism of modernist poetry. I close it with reluctance but with confidence knowing my companion will be on the poetry shelf for exploration each time I refer to it.

Hazel Menehira