Modern Poetry and Poetics

ENGL 408: Modern Poetry and Poetics
https://legacy.saylor.org/engl408/Intro/
John Freed, Ph.D. -- Saylor lead author
Creative Commons Copyright
Course Introduction
Purpose of Course:
The decades between roughly 1890 and 1960 witnessed unprecedented efforts to create
new art, new values, and a new culture in Europe and the United States to distance itself
from the more socially acceptable works of late Victorian poets and artists. During this
time, Western writers, artists, and intellectuals questioned the accepted aesthetic norms
and produced radically experimental works of art and new understandings of what it
means to live in modern times. The first half of the 20th century also witnessed the most
devastating conflicts in Western history the two World Wars and the Holocaust and
these events accelerated and profoundly influenced cultural changes. Modernist poetry
one of the most interesting cultural developments emerged during this time.
While it is true that modernist poetic developments sprang up in unlikely and seemingly
spontaneous ways, we will attempt to progress through this course in a roughly
chronological manner. This is because, in many ways, even modern poetry retains a
social form that can reflect the cultural and political situations in which it is written. The
course starts with a theoretical consideration of modernity and modernism, as well as a
brief introduction to poetics and some references to pre-modern Victorian poetic
practices. This course then explores transitional, fin-de-sicle poetic innovations of the
French symbolists and World War I poets. The course addresses early modernist
movements like Imagism, Vorticism, and Futurism as well as the writings of High
Modernism. A unit on African-American modernism, often referred to as the Harlem
Renaissance, explores another crucial dimension. Finally, you will analyze how World
War II and the Holocaust affected poetry.
By the end of the course, you will have studied the work of major American and British
modernist poets, and you will have critically explored the characteristic techniques,
concerns, and tropes of modern poetry.
The Courses Grand Design
Two Bridges to Modernity
Think of this course in terms of two bridges. The shorter bridge is the main subject of this
course, or modern poetry in a certain time period, being from the relative orderliness of
the late 19th century (i.e., Victorian era) to the chaotic end of World War II and the
potentialities for world-wide nuclear annihilation during the early 1960s. The longer
bridge proceeds from certainty into doubt.
The Longer Bridge
The longer cultural bridge is the overarching philosophical paradigm shift to
modernity, marked in literary terms on one end by John Miltons 1674 Paradise
Lost [Note: The best website for all of Miltons poetry complete with annotations is The
John Milton Reading Room at Dartmouth.] and on the other end by William Carlos
Williams 1923 The Red Wheelbarrow. The really big question in this course is how
did Western culture come from Miltons confident justifying the ways of God to men in
his epic poem:
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heavnly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heavns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: . . .
to barely being able to hang on to the existence of reality itself with William Carlos
Williams poem?
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white

chickens
So much depends on what, Mr. Williams? Milton explained in gargantuan detail what
depended on Adams tasting of the forbidden fruit, while William Carlos Williams leaves
us with a 16 word enigma about a wheelbarrow and chickens.
The Shorter Bridge
The shorter bridge that this course on the modern represents is the one that connects the
Victorian period to the start of our contemporary artistic endeavors. The one that begins
near Tennysons Into the valley of death rode the 6,000 and ends with the advent of the
Beat poets with Ginsbergs Howl: dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix. Ginsbergs Howl in so many ways registers the
culmination of the wars and the beginning of self-absorbed, contemporary poetry, which
would be the subject for a subsequent course.
The main goal of this course is to show you the functioning of that shorter bridge. Hart
Crane visualized it both concretely and metaphorically. For him, it was the Brooklyn
Bridge itself. For me, it is the term modern.
On her death bed surrounded by her friends and fellow artists, Gertrude Steins last words
expressed modern arts continuing efforts to express the inexpressible in our center-less
universe. What is the answer? she asked, and when no answer came she laughed and
said: Then, what is the question? We will hear a number of 20th century poets try to
come up with that question throughout this course.
Primary Resources: This course comprises a range of different open access, online
materials. However, it makes primary use of the following materials:
Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Modern Poetry Lectures
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: English Departments Modern American
Poetry
University of Pennsylvania: Professor Al Filreis Modern and Contemporary
American Poetry resources and the Coursera MOOC link for Fall 2013
https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry .
Time Commitment: This course should take you a total of 145 hours to complete. You
will have unlimited access to the course and can approach the course in any way that you
deem appropriate for your learning style and other time commitments. The course is
projected over a traditional 15 week semester, so you may choose to do it in this time
frame, or you may take less time or more time. Each unit includes a time advisory that
lists the amount of time you are expected to spend on each subunit. These should help
you plan your time.
Tips/Suggestions: As you study the poems in this course, keep in mind that it may help
to read each poem on the page as well as out loud. This course covers a wide variety of
literary styles; therefore, it is essential to keep careful notes as you study. Write down the
names of any style, movement, poet, literary conventions used by that poet, and
interpretations you have about the poem. Review your notes from previous units before
starting a new unit so that comparisons between the various styles and movements of
modernist poetry will be more apparent.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:
define the term modernism with regard to Anglo-American poetry, and describe how it
is distinct from the descriptor late-Victorian;
closely read (i.e., explicate) the poetics of representative examples of modern poetry;
discuss the transitional aspects between late-Victorian and modernism;
analyze a wide variety of modernist poems by comparing and contrasting them in
terms of form, content, and rhetorical purpose;
chronologically organize the most important British and American modernist poets
into definable categories or movements;
distinguish low modernism from the high modernism of Pound and Eliot;
identify and analyze political and activist aspects of modernist poetry with specific
reference to the Harlem Renaissance; and
analyze the socio-political context of the modernist movements in America and
Europe in the first half of the 20th century with special emphasis on the relationship
between poetry, the two World Wars, and the Holocaust.
Dr. John Freed, course development consultant
jfreed11@gmail.com
Unit 1: The Province of Modern Poetry
This course will attempt to snake its way chronologically through the poetry produced in
the first half of the 20thcentury under the literary banner of modernism. In Unit 1, we
will begin by defining modernism and reviewing the poetry and poets that preceded
modern poetry in the Victorian era. With the objective of defining modernism in mind, we
will explore what modern is NOT that is, you will explore those 19th-century
assumptions and conventions that modern poets sought to dissociate themselves from and
the socio-historical context in which they had developed. This unit contains a sampler of
the Victorian-era establishment-approved poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Rudyard
Kipling, Matthew Arnold, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Whittier
that the modernist poets so self-consciously rebelled against. The modernist poets also
rebelled against those societies that produced World War I, World War II, and the Cold
War.
Fortunately, the most familiar American poet, Robert Frost, emerged at the beginning of
the modernist movement. Frost is the poet that Professor Langdon Hammer first chooses
to introduce in his Modern Poetry course at Yale University. The unit will lead into an
introduction of modern poets through a study of Robert Frost.Finally, this unit will
conclude with a general discussion of characteristic modernist concerns as they tend to
be defined by scholars.
Unit 1 Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit, you should be able to:
define the term modernism with regard to poetry; and
analyze representative examples of Victorian-era poetrys genteel, chauvinistic,
naturalistic and formalist qualities, and contrast these poems with qualities of modern
poetry as exemplified by Robert Frost.
1.1 What Does the Term Modern Mean?
1.1.1 Modernism: Historical Background and Preliminary Definitions
Reading: Sweet Briar College: Dr. Christopher L.C.E. Witcombes The Roots of
Modernism
Link: Sweet Briar College: Dr. Christopher L.C.E. Witcombes The Roots of
Modernism (HTML)
Instructions: Read The Roots of Modernism, which provides some preliminary
definitions of modernism and provides an overview of transformations of Western culture
that took place between the Renaissance and the late 19th century.
As you read, consider the following study questions: How does Dr. Witcombe define
modernism? What does he identify as the most important reasons for its emergence?
Reading this text and answering the questions above should take approximately 1 hour.
Reading: The University of Texas at Austin: Harry Ransom Centers Press Release:
Make It New: The Rise of Modernism Exhibition
Link: The University of Texas at Austin: Harry Ransom Centers Press Release: Make It
New: The Rise of Modernism Exhibition (HTML)
Instructions: Read this press release for an overview of the historical context of and the
defining features of the modernist period.
Reading this press release should take approximately 15 minutes.
1.1.2 Differentiating Our Modernist Terminology

Reading: Vanderbilt University: Dr. Bill Kupinses Modernism, Modernization,
Modernit, Modern: Some Definitions
Link: Vanderbilt University: Dr. Bill Kupinses Modernism, Modernization, Modernit,
Modern: Some Definitions (HTML)
Instructions: Read this text, which proposes various definitions of modernism and
modernity.
As you read, consider the following study questions: How do these definitions differ from
one another? Why do you think they differ? Which of the definitions do you find most
useful at this point in the course?
Reading this text and answering the questions above should take approximately 15
minutes.
1.2 A Victorian-Era Sampler: The Moderns Antithesis

1.2.1 Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Reading: Victorian Web: Alfred Lord Tennysons The Charge of the Light Brigade
Link: Victorian Web: Alfred Lord Tennysons The Charge of the Light
Brigade (HTML)
Instructions: Read Tennysons poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Note the
chauvinistic, naturalistic, sentimental, and formalist attributes of this Victorian-era poem
and the accompanying commentary. Most of these attributes become antithetical to
modernist poets.
Reading this poem should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: Victorian Web: Hamilton Becks Explication Commentary
Link: Victorian Web: Hamilton Becks Explication Commentary (HTML)
Instructions: After you have studied Tennysons poem, The Charge of the Light
Brigade, read Becks Explication Commentary from the paragraph beginning with
The Charge of the Light Brigade was certainly an example of bravado through the
paragraph that begins with Tennyson was not nave in his praise of war Keep the
themes of bravado and the glory of war in mind for Victorian poetry to contrast against
the war poems you will read later in Units 4 and 8.
Reading this commentary should take approximately 15 minutes.
Reading: Internet Archive: Alfred Lord Tennysons The Brook, Break, Break, Break,
Sweet and Low, and The Eagle
Link: Internet Archive: Alfred Lord Tennysons The Brook, Break, Break, Break,
Sweet and Low, and The Eagle (HTML)
Instructions: Read the following poems: The Brook, Break, Break, Break, Sweet
and Low, and The Eagle. Consider how these poems compare and contrast to The
Charge of the Light Brigade.
Studying these poems should take approximately 1 hour.
1.2.2 Rudyard Kipling

Reading: Rudyard Kiplings My Father's Chair, The Secret of the Machines, A Song
of the English, and Alastair Wilsons Commentary on A Song of the English
Link: Rudyard Kiplings My Father's Chair, (HTML) The Secret of the
Machines, (HTML), A Song of the English (HTML), and Alastair
Wilsons Commentary on A Song of the English (HTML)
Instructions: Read Kiplings poems: My Fathers Chair, The Secret of the Machines,
and A Song of the English. Then, read the accompanying commentary. Note Kipling's
hyper-patriotism and belief in the English empire's industrial and moral exceptionalism.
Studying these poems and commentary should take approximately 1 hour.
1.2.3 Matthew Arnold

Reading: Victorian Web: Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach
Link: Victorian Web: Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach (HTML)

Instructions: Read Arnolds poem, Dover Beach. Note the qualities of the poem that
make it particular to its time, such as nature imagery, sensory imagery, song-like rhythm,
rhyme scheme, and others. Dover Beach is Arnold's fatalistic warning to hold onto the
sweetness of a moment as long as possible before the imperial giant England, poised on
the precipice of Dover's cliffs, is swept [off] with confused alarms of struggle and
flight / Where ignorant armies clash at night.
Reading: Victorian Web: Julia Touches Arnolds Dover Beach: A Commentary
Link: Victorian Web: Julia Touches Arnolds Dover Beach: A Commentary (HTML)
Instructions: After you have studied the poem Dover Beach, read Julia Touches
commentary on the poems structure, form, tone, and theme.
1.2.4 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Reading: Poem Hunter: Henry Wadsworth Longfellows An April Day
Link: Poem Hunter: Henry Wadsworth Longfellows An April Day (HTML)
Instructions: Read Longfellows poem, An April Day. This poem represents
Longfellows appreciation of the natural, pastoral world.
Reading: University of Torontos Representative Poetry Online: Henry Wadsworth
Longfellows The Landlords Tale: Paul Reveres Ride
Link: University of Torontos Representative Poetry Online: Henry Wadsworth
Longfellows The Landlord's Tale: Paul Reveres Ride (HTML)
Instructions: Read Longfellows poem, The Landlords Tale. This poem represents
Longfellows nationalistic pride.
Reading: The American Scholar: Jill Lepores How Longfellow Woke the Dead
Link: The American Scholar: Jill Lepores How Longfellow Woke the Dead (HTML)
Instructions: Read this commentary on Longfellows infamous poem, The Landlords
Tale: Paul Reveres Ride.

As you read, consider the following study questions: Do you agree with Lepores reading
of Longfellows poem? Why, or why not? Explain your reasoning.
Reading this text and answering the questions above should take approximately 1 hour
and 30 minutes.
1.2.5 John Greenleaf Whittier

Reading: NNDB: Biography of John Greenleaf Whittier
Link: NNDB: Biography of John Greenleaf Whittier (HTML)
Instructions: Read this biography for an introduction to the poet, John Greenleaf Whittier.
Reading this text should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: North Shore Community College: John Greenleaf Whittiers Telling the Bees
Link: North Shore Community College: John Greenleaf Whittiers Telling the
Bees (HTML)
Instructions: Read Whittiers poem, Telling the Bees. Note the themes of this poem and
the formal characteristics that are typical of Victorian poetry. Take notes on this poem as
you will revisit it later in subunit 1.3 as a precursor to Robert Frost.
Reading: The Guardian: Carol Rumens Poem of the Week: Telling the Bees by John
Greenleaf Whittier
Link: The Guardian: Carol Rumens Poem of the Week: Telling the Bees by John
Greenleaf Whittier (HTML)
Instructions: Read this commentary on Telling the Bees. This reading should
contextualize Whittier for you between the Scotch poet, Robert Burns, and Whittier's
New England successor, Robert Frost.
1.3 Introduction to Modern Poetry and Robert Frost

Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 1: Introduction to
Modern Poetry
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 1: Introduction to Modern
Poetry (Adobe Flash, QuickTime, HTML, Mp3)
Instructions: Watch the lecture titled Introduction to Modern Poetry. As you view the
lecture, note how Professor Hammer identifies the goals of modernist poets and their
means of breaking with traditional forms and conventions.
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, and completing the writing activity above
should take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Reading: Poem Hunter: Robert Frosts Out, Out and Mowing
Link: Poem Hunter: Robert Frosts Out, Out (HTML) and Mowing (HTML)
Instructions: Read Robert Frosts poems, Out, Out and Mowing. Note the applicable
characteristics of modernist poetry that Professor Hammer describes in his lecture.
As you read, consider the following study question and writing prompt: What effects
does Frost try to achieve? Write a brief interpretation of each poem.
Studying these poems, answering the question above, and completing the writing activity
should take approximately 45 minutes.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 2: Robert Frost
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 2: Robert Frost (Adobe
Flash, QuickTime, HTML, Mp3)
Instructions: Watch the lecture titled Robert Frost.
As you view this lecture, consider the following study questions: How does Professor
Hammers interpretation of the poems Out, Out and Mowing compare to your own?
Revisit Whittiers poem, Telling the Bees. How might this poem have influenced the
American vernacular used by Frost?
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, and answering the questions above should
take you approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Unit 1 Essay Exam Type of Assessment

You can test your content competency of unit 1 of Saylor's ENGL408 course by outlining
your specific answers to the following set of essay prompts to prepare for the final exam.
A typical essay length would be between 250 and 500 words.
1. Briefly explain what can be said about Modernism in general from Gertrude Steins
prose-poem A Light in the Mood http://www.poetryarchive.com/s/a_light_in_the_moon.html and Picassos portrait of her shown here
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Gertrude_Stein_sitting_on_a_sofa
_in_her_Paris_studio,_with_a_portrait_of_her_by_Pablo_Picasso.jpg and here
http://uramericansinparis.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/picasso-stein1.jpg .
2. In what specific ways does Matthew Arnolds poem Dover Beach
http://www.bartleby.com/246/420.html manifest transitional elements between lateVictorian and Modernist poetry?
3. What are some of the essential differences between Robert Frosts poem Home
Burial http://www.bartleby.com/118/6.html and the John Greenleaf Whittier poem
Telling the Bees? http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/telling-the-bees/ What qualities
characterize one of them as Modernist and the other as late-Victorian?
Instructions: Consider the essay prompts for this assessment, and craft an essay founded
on your readings from this unit. After writing your essay, use the Rubric for Effectively
Written College-Level Essays (PDF) to self-evaluate your writing.
Completing this assessment should take approximately 3 hours.
Unit 2: The French Symbolists: The Fountainhead of Modernism

Now that you have a good sense of the conventions and assumptions that the modernists resisted, we
will turn our attention to the French Symbolists in this unit. By studying the material in this unit, you
will be able to answer questions about the relationship between Anglo-American modern poetry of the
20th century and the French Symbolist poetry of the 19th century. You will be able to distinguish the
avaunt-garde poetic experiments of three of the best known poets of this movement: Charles
Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stphane Mallarm. You will also be able to recognize how those
experiments became the fountainhead of modernism.

define French Symbolism of the late 19th century;
analyze some examples of symbolist poems and poets through close reading; and
identify some of the major features of French Symbolist poetry that carry-over into the modernist
poetry at the beginning of the 20th century.
2.1 Concepts of Truth and Elements of Mystery in French Symbolist Poetry
Reading: Poets.org: The Academy of American Poets A Brief Guide to the Symbolists
Link: Poets.org: The Academy of American Poets A Brief Guide to the Symbolists (HTML)
Instructions: Read this introduction to the French Symbolists. Then, follow the links in the left column
under Related Authors to read the full entries about Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and
Stphane Mallarm.
As you read, consider the following study questions: What were the most important characteristics of
French Symbolism? How did Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarm contribute to symbolist poetics?
What connections do you see between each of their lives and their literary experiments?
Reading these sections and answering the questions above should take approximately 1 hour and 30
minutes.
2.2 Charles Baudelaire, Father of Modern Poetry

Reading: Poem Hunter: Charles Baudelaires Correspondences, Invitation to a Voyage, and Cats
Link: Poem Hunter: Charles Baudelaires Correspondences (HTML), Invitation to a
Voyage (HTML), and Cats (HTML)
Instructions: Read Baudelaires poems, Correspondences and Invitation to a Voyage, as well as all
of the provided translations of Cats.
As you read the poems, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: What are the most
important stylistic and imagery-related differences between Correspondences and Invitation to a
Voyage? Why are the translations of Cats different from one another? Why is Symbolist poetry
particularly difficult to translate? When you compare Baudelaires poems with the Victorian poems you
studied in Unit 1, what are the most important differences? Do you perceive any similarities?
Studying these poems, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
2.3 Arthur Rimbaud, Stphane Mallarm, and the French Symbolists

Reading: Black Cat Poems: Arthur Rimbauds Dawn, Departure, Eternity, and Sleep
Link: Black Cat Poems: Arthur
Rimbauds Dawn (HTML), Departure (HTML), Eternity (HTML), and Sleep (HTML)
Instructions: Read all four poems: Dawn, Departure, Eternity, and Sleep. Note that a
literary symbol is something, such as an object, picture, written word, or sound, which represents
something else by association, resemblance, or convention. Recall from A Brief Guide to Symbolists
in subunit 2.1: The symbols for which they are named are emblems of the actual world as opposed
to the purely emotional world which dominates their work that accumulate supernatural significance
in the absence of a clear narrative or location.
As you read these poems, consider the ways in which Rimbaud use symbols and/or symbolic language
to engage his readers. Identify the symbols used by Rimbaud, and write down all of associations that
they elicit in your mind.
Studying these poems and completing the activity described above should take approximately 2 hours.
Reading: Angelfire: Stphane Mallarms Afternoon of a Faun
Link: Angelfire: Stphane Mallarms Afternoon of a Faun (HTML)
Instructions: Read Mallarms poem, Afternoon of a Faun.
As you read, consider the symbols and/or symbolic language that Mallarm used to engage his readers.
Identify the symbols used by Mallarm, and write down all of the associations that they elicit in your
mind.
Reading this poem and completing the activity described above should take approximately 30 minutes.

You can test your content competency of Unit 2 of Saylors ENGL408 course by outlining your specific
answers to the following set of essay prompts to prepare for the final exam. A typical essay length
would be between 250 and 500 words.
1. After reading Charles Baudelaires Les Chats (Cats), http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/les-
chats-cats/ list all of the images used by Baudelaire in this poem and write down the associations that
each image elicits in your mind. This is how imagery becomes a symbolic link between the author and
the reader of lyrical poetry. Then, write a brief essay on how Baudelaire uses symbolism in this poem
and how that affects the readers interpretation of the poem.
2. Paul Valery, a fellow poet, reported that Mallarm himself was unhappy that his poem Afternoon
of a Faun http://www.angelfire.com/art/doit/mallarme.html was used as the basis for Claude
Debussys Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_7loz-HWUM
in this manner:
He [Mallarme] believed that his own music was sufficient, and that even with the best intentions in
the world,it was a veritable crime as far as poetry was concerned to juxtapose poetry and music, even
if it were the finest music there is.
Mallarme himself, however, sent the following note of congratulations to Debussy:
I have just come out of the concert, deeply moved. The marvel! Your illustration of the Afternoon of a
Faun, which presents a dissonance with my text only by going much further, really, into nostalgia and
into light, with finesse, with sensuality, with richness. I press your hand admiringly, Debussy. Yours,
Mallarm.
After reading the poem and listening to the Debussy piece, explain which version of Mallarmes
response you believe is more reliable.
Instructions: Consider the essay prompts for this assessment, and craft an essay founded on your
readings from this unit. After writing your essay, use the Rubric for Effectively Written College-Level
Essays (PDF) to self-evaluate your writing.
Unit 3: Early Modernist Movements: Symbolism, Imagism, and Their Relatives

From a contemporary poets perspective that often simplifies the initial choice of directions between
formalist verse such as Dylan Thomas' famous villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night
and free verse such as e.e. cummings spring is like a perhaps / Hand in a window, the existence of
so many, often contentious movements, in modern poetry (19001960) seems peculiar. What may be
even stranger is that almost every movement is backed by a revolutionary manifesto, arguing that
movements greater understanding of the true nature or purpose of its brand of poetry, published in its
own special journal.
Jeanine Johnson in her book, Why Write Poetry?: Modern Poets Defending Their Art, attempts to sum
up the rationale behind the plethora of poetic movements that sprung up throughout the 20th century:
Pope and Tennyson could assume, in a way that Eliot and Pound could not, that the interpretive
equipment their readers brought to their poems was more or less adequate and therefore, the modern
poets wrote manifestoes and critical prose in unprecedented quantities to try to communicate to
readers the principles at work behind their poems. . . . Many of these manifestoes promoted a
particular type of or approach to poetry. These were defences of imagism, vorticism, futurism, and
objectivism; of the Fugitives and neo-symbolists; of an authentic Negro or African-American
literature as envisioned in a certain way by Langston Hughes in Fire!! (1926), and in other ways by
later authors such as Amiiri Baraka and Audre Lorde; of Projective Verse and of the works of the
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets; of Beat poetry and of feminist confessional poetry.
In this unit, we will consider an extensive sampling of some of these movements, including Symbolism
and Imagism. We will discuss other movements, such as the more radical movements of Futurism,
Vorticism, Objectivism, and High Modernism, in greater detail in Units 3, 5, and 6 of this course,
metaphorically interrupted by Unit 4s coverage of the most defining event of the 20th century, World
War I.
This unit opens with a comparison of Symbolism to Victorian era poetry. This unit will discuss the
incorporation of Symbolism into modern British poetic expression, such as with W.B. Yeats, and
American poetic expressions, such as with Wallace Stevens, and will then turn to the various other
isms that were cultivated in the early 1900s, examining their poetics, practices, and concerns.This
unit attempts to define Imagism and then continues to explore Imagism and its sister poetic movements
with names like Amygism as well as Movement and Stasis. Imagism is the name given to a movement in
poetry, originating in 1912 and represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.),
Wallace Stevens, Richard Aldington, F.S. Flint, John Gould Fletcher, Harriet Monroe, Marianne
Moore, and others. Imagism aims at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. In
the early period, the word was often written in the French form Imagisme as an extension of the
practice of the 19th century French Symbolists studied in Unit 2.

define and identify characteristics of the set of movements branching most directly from the French
Symbolistes: Imagism, variations of Symbolism, Amygism, and Movement and Stasis; and
analyze some examples of poems and poets from each of these movements.
Reading: Brown University and The University of Tulsas The Modernist Journals Project:
Modernism Began in the Magazines
Link: Brown University and The University of Tulsas The Modernist Journals Project: Modernism
Began in the Magazines (HTML)
Instructions: Review this excellent collection of poetry journals that sprung up in the early 20th century
and published boundary-breaking modern poets works and theories of poetry. Click on the image of
each journal to learn more about the publication.
Reviewing the journals should take approximately 45 minutes.
3.1 The Decadent Symbolists

Reading: Grand Valley State University: Michael Websters Poetic Modes in the Late 19th and Early
20th Century
Link: Grand Valley State University: Michael Websters Poetic Modes in the Late 19th and Early
20thCentury (HTML)
Instructions: Read this article, taking notes on how Symbolist and Imagist poetry was a reaction against
the genteel poetry of the Victorian era. This reading will also revisit the definition and characteristics of
modernism. Identify the features of the decadent Imagists and Symbolists vs. those of the genteel
Victorian poets.
Reading this article and identifying these features should take approximately 1 hour.
3.2 William Butler Yeats and the Early Use of Irish Mythology
Reading: Bartleby: William Butler Yeats The Song of Wandering Aengus and A Coat
Link: Bartleby: William Butler Yeats The Song of Wandering Aengus (HTML) and A
Coat (HTML)
Instructions: Read Yeats poems, The Song of Wandering Aengus and A Coat.
As you read, consider the following study question and writing prompt: How does Symbolism enter
into Yeats poetry? For each poem, write a paragraph in which you analyze the poems dominant
symbols. Consider posting your paragraph to the ENGL408 Course Discussion Board, and respond to
other students posts.
Studying these poems, answering the question above, and completing the writing activity should take
approximately 1 hour.
Reading: WikiSource: William Butler Yeats The Madness of King Goll
Link: WikiSource: William Butler Yeats The Madness of King Goll (HTML)
Instructions: Read Yeats poem, The Madness of King Goll. This poem presents itself as a
monologue and an ode to the Irish spirit.
As you read, consider the following question and writing prompt: How might the poet represent
himself through King Goll? How might the use of myth correspond to the use of symbolism?
Reading this poem, answering the question above, and completing the writing activity should take
approximately 2 hours.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 4: William Butler Yeats
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 4: William Butler Yeats (Adobe Flash,
QuickTime, HTML, Mp3)
Instructions: Watch the William Butler Yeats lecture. In this lecture, Professor Hammer analyzes two
of Yeats poems: The Song of the Wandering Aengus and A Coat. Professor Hammer also proposes
that Yeats, in a certain sense, identified with King Goll. Consider how Professor Hammers connections
between the poet and King Goll compare or contrast to your own ideas about this subject that you
wrote about after reading the poem, The Madness of King Goll.
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, answering the questions above, and completing the writing
activity should take approximately 2 hours.
Reading: Poetry Archive: William Butler Yeats To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
Link: Poetry Archive: William Butler Yeats To the Rose upon the Rood of Time (HTML)
Instructions: Read Yeats poem, To the Rose upon the Rood of Time. As you read, identify the
poems formal features, its themes, and its use of symbolism and imagery.
Reading this poem and identifying its features should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: Bartleby: William Butler Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole

Link: Bartleby: William Butler Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole (HTML)
Instructions: Read Yeats poem, The Wild Swans at Coole. Identify the formal features, themes, and
use of symbolism and imagery in this poem.
Reading this poem and identifying its features should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: William Butler Yeats The Symbolism of Poetry
Link: William Butler Yeats The Symbolism of Poetry (HTML)
Instructions: After reading Yeats poems in this subunit, read Yeats essay, The Symbolism of Poetry.
As you read, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: How is Yeats approach to
Symbolism different from that of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarm?
Reading this essay, answering the question above, and completing the writing activity should take
3.3 Wallace Stevens as an American Symbolist

Reading: Poem Hunter: Wallace Stevens Sunday Morning and The Man on the Dump
Link: Poem Hunter: Wallace Stevens Sunday Morning (HTML) and The Man on the
Dump (HTML)
Instructions: Read Wallace Stevens poems, Sunday Morning and The Man on the Dump.
What Symbolist elements do you notice in these poems?
Studying these poems and completing the writing activity above should take approximately 2 hours.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 19: Wallace Stevens
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 19: Wallace Stevens (Adobe Flash,
Instructions: View Professor Hammers lecture on Wallace Stevens. Note any similarities and
differences between your own analysis of Stevens poems and the analysis provided by Professor
Hammer.
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, and identifying similarities in your analysis and Professor
Hammers analysis should take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Reading: University of Pennsylvania: Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Link: University of Pennsylvania: Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird (HTML)
Instructions: Read Wallace Stevens poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
As you read, consider the following study questions: What is the subject of the poem? What symbols
does Stevens use? How does this symbolism affect you as the reader?
Reading this poem and answering the questions above should take approximately 30 minutes.
3.4 What Is Imagism?

Reading: University of Pennsylvania: Dr. Al Filreis Imagism
Link: University of Pennsylvania: Dr. Al Filreis Imagism (HTML)
Instructions: Read this brief text for definitions and characteristics of Imagism and Imagists.
Reading this text should take less than 15 minutes.

Reading: Wikipedia: Imagism
Link: Wikipedia: Imagism (HTML)
Instructions: Read Imagism for an overview of the movement as well as the publications and poets
associated with the movement.
Reading this article should take approximately 30 minutes.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 8: Imagism
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 8: Imagism (HTML)
Instructions: View this lecture, focusing on how Professor Hammer defines Imagism and what he
identifies as the most important characteristics of Imagist poems.
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, and completing the writing activity should take
3.5 Ezra Pounds Early Experiments with Symbolism and Imagism

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Ezra Pound
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Ezra Pound (HTML)
Instructions: Read this biographical essay on Ezra Pound. Take notes on the text as you read about
Pounds various leadership positions with regard to the Imagist and Symbolist movements.
Reading this essay should take approximately 45 minutes.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Ezra Pounds A Few Donts by an Imagiste
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Ezra Pounds A Few Donts by an Imagiste (HTML)
Read Pounds essay on what not to do as an Imagist. As you read, consider the following study
questions: How does Pound define Imagism? How does he discuss the process of translating poetry?
Reading this essay, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
Reading: Bartleby: Ezra Pounds In a Station of the Metro and The River-Merchants Wife: A
Letter
Link: Bartleby: Ezra Pounds In a Station of the Metro (HTML) and The River-Merchants Wife: A
Letter (HTML)
Instructions: Read Pounds poems, In a Station of the Metro and The River-Merchants Wife: A
Letter.
As you study these poems, consider the following questions and writing prompt: What do these poems
express about the modern condition? In what ways does each poems form depart from traditional
poetic norms? What is the effect of introducing references to Chinese culture in the second poem?
3.6 H.D.s Imagist Poems

Reading: University of Pennsylvania: H.D.s Sea Rose
Link: University of Pennsylvania: H.D.s Sea Rose (HTML)
Instructions: Read H.D.s poem, Sea Rose. As you read, consider the following study questions:
What is the dominant imagery in this poem? Does the poem allow you to form unambiguous images in
your mind? Why, or why not?
Reading: Bartleby: H.D.s Oread
Link: Bartleby: H.D.s Oread (HTML)
Instructions: Read H.D.s poem, Oread. As you read, consider the following study questions: What is
the dominant imagery in this poem? Does this poem allow you to form ambiguous images in your
mind? Why, or why not?
3.7 Amy Lowells Imagism and Amygism

Reading: Modern American Poetry: Amy Lowells On Imagism
Link: Modern American Poetry: Amy Lowells On Imagism (HTML)
Instructions: Read Lowells essay, On Imagism. The term Amygism was used by Ezra Pound in
resistance to Lowells theories on Imagism.
As you read, consider the following study questions: How is Amygism both similar to yet different
from Imagism? Why might Pound take issue with how Amy Lowell describes the main concerns of
Imagist poets? Consider how Pounds A Few Donts by an Imagiste compares to Lowells On
Imagism.
Reading this essay and answering the questions above should take approximately 45 minutes.
Reading: American Poems: Amy Lowells The Green Bowl and Patterns
Link: American Poems: Amy Lowells The Green Bowl (HTML) and Patterns (HTML)
Instructions: Read Lowells poems, The Green Bowl and Patterns. As you read, consider the
following study question and writing prompt: How do these poems implement or step away from the
rules of Imagist poets as indicated in the essay, On Imagism?
3.8 Marianne Moore: The Grand Promoter

Reading: Wikipedia: Marianne Moore
Link: Wikipedia: Marianne Moore (HTML)
Instructions: Read the biography of Marianne Moore for an overview of her contribution to modernist
poetry.
Reading: Poem Hunter: Marianne Moores A Grave, An Octopus, Silence, The Fish, and The
Paper Nautilus
Link: Poem Hunter: Marianne Moores A Grave (HTML), An
Octopus (HTML), Silence (HTML),The Fish (HTML), and The Paper Nautilus (HTML)
Instructions: Read Moores poems: A Grave, An Octopus, Silence, and The Paper Nautilus.
Note that Moore often used syllabics, the counting of syllables as a form of meter, rather than typical
metrical lines; a strong example of the use of syllabics is The Fish.
Studying these poems and completing the writing activity should take approximately 3 hours.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 17: Marianne Moore and Lecture
18: Marianne Moore (cont.)
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 17: Marianne Moore (Adobe Flash,
QuickTime, HTML, Mp3) and Lecture 18: Marianne Moore (cont.) (Adobe Flash, QuickTime,
HTML, Mp3)
Instructions: View these two lectures, focusing on how Professor Hammer views Marianne Moore.
Write a paragraph that summarizes what he identifies as the most important characteristics of her
poems.
As you view these lectures, consider the following study question: How does Professor Hammers
interpretations and analysis of Moores poems compare to your own?
Watching these lectures, pausing to take notes, and answering the question above should take
3.9 William Carlos Williams: Movement and Stasis

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of William Carlos Williams
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of William Carlos Williams (HTML)
Instructions: Read William Carlos Williams biography. As you read, take notes about the most
important turning points in Williams life and writing.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 16: William Carlos Williams
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 16: William Carlos Williams (Adobe
Instructions: View this lecture on William Carlos Williams, focusing on how Professor Hammer
characterizes Williams poems.
As you view this lecture, consider the following study question: What do you see as the most important
differences between Williams poems and the poems of other Imagists?
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, and answering the question above should take you
Reading: William Carlos Williams The Poem as a Field of Action
Link: William Carlos Williams The Poem as a Field of Action (HTML)
Instructions: Read Williams 1948 essay, The Poem as a Field of Action. As you read, consider the
following study questions and writing prompt: How are ideas presented in this essay related to Imagist
theories you studied earlier in this unit? What elements are new here?
Reading: University of Pennsylvania: William Carlos Williams The Red Wheelbarrow
Link: University of Pennsylvania: William Carlos Williams The Red Wheelbarrow (HTML)
Instructions: Read Williams poem, The Red Wheelbarrow, which was presented in the course
introduction in comparison to Milton. As you revisit this poem, consider the following study questions:
In The Red Wheelbarrow, the first stanza is very different from the ones that follow. What is the
difference? What is the effect of this juxtaposition on the reader?
Reading: Poets.org: William Carlos Williams This Is Just to Say
Link: Poets.org: William Carlos Williams This Is Just to Say (HTML)
Instructions: Read Williams poem, This Is Just to Say. As you read, consider the following study
questions: How does This is Just to Say illustrate the principles of Imagism? What tone comes across
in this poem?

You can test your content competency of Unit 3 of Saylors ENGL 408 course by outlining your specific
1. In subunit 3.4, Professor Al Filreis defines Imagism. Demonstrate how it applies in your analysis of
specific poems from at least three different Imagist poets.
2. What would the early 20th century Ezra Pound of In a Station of the Metro
http://www.bartleby.com/104/106.html say concerning modernism to the late 20thcentury Kenny
Goldsmith of Soliloquy http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/goldsmith__soliloquy.html ?
3. According to Professor Langdon Hammers lecture on Marianne Moore, how is Mt. Rainier like
an octopus, and how are both somehow images of the poet herself in Moores poem An Octopus
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-octopus/ ?
4. What would William Carlos Williams, who wrote Portrait of a Lady,
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/williams/1038 say to Richard Wilbur, who wrote Cottage
Street, 1953, http://www.aprweb.org/poem/cottage-street-1953 concerning the differences between
his poems imagery, diction (word choice), rhythm (musicality),and form and Wilburs? This prompt
may require you to conduct some research on Richard Wilbur for context of his life and works.
Unit 4: Poetry of World War I and Its Aftermath

While poets experimented with new poetic forms and styles, Europe was consumed by war. In this unit,
you will chart the progression of attitudes toward the war as expressed through poetry, beginning with
the patriotic verses of the early war years and continuing through some of the bitterer, disillusioned
lyrical poems of the late war years. You will study changes in form, tone, and style, all the while noting
the degree to which the wars major poets adhered to traditional (19th-century) conventions and
hypothesizing reasons for that allegiance despite the explosion of avaunt-garde trends. In this unit, you
will study poems by Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, and e.e.
cummings.

identify the most important English poets who wrote about the Great War;
compare and contrast as well as discuss poems written by English poets before, during, and after
World War I;
identify poetic devices which helped romanticize war in early 20th century English poetry, and
relate trends in poetry to their historical context;
analyze the ways in which English poets like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and others grappled
with the brutality of modern warfare and its psychological effects;
characterize and analyze Georgian poetry; and
compare and contrast wartime poetry in England with early modernist poetry (Imagism and
Vorticism) in England and the United States.
4.1 Off to War the Chivalric Ideal
Reading: Bartleby: Siegfried Sassoons The Dragon and the Undying
Link: Bartleby: Siegfried Sassoons The Dragon and the Undying (HTML)
Instructions: Read Sassoons poem, The Dragon and the Undying. As you read this poem, consider
the following study questions and write down some notes with your responses to help prepare you for
the upcoming written assignment in this subunit: Does this poem attempt to provide a realistic
depiction of modern war? What words and phrases point to a romanticized vision of battle? What
emotional effects does this poem produce in the reader? Why might this poem be considered the
chivalric ideal? How do you think English audiences reacted to this poem during the time of World War
I?
Reading: Bartleby: Rupert Brookes The Soldier
Link: Bartleby: Rupert Brookes The Soldier (HTML)
Instructions: Read Brookes poem, The Soldier. As you read this poem, consider the following study
questions and writing prompt: Does this poem attempt to provide a realistic depiction of modern war?
What words and phrases point to a romanticized vision of battle? What emotional effects does this
poem produce in the reader? Why might this poem be considered the chivalric ideal? How do you think
English audiences reacted to this poem during the time of World War I? How does Brookes poem
compare and contrast to Sassoons poem?
Reading this poem, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
4.2 Realities of Modern Warfare

Reading: BBC: Dr. Stephen Badseys The Western Front and the Birth of Total War, Dr. Joanna
Bourkes Shell Shock during World War One, and Dr. Ruth Henigs Versailles and Peacemaking
Link: BBC: Dr. Stephen Badseys The Western Front and the Birth of Total War (HTML), Dr. Joanna
Bourkes Shell Shock during World War One (HTML), and Dr. Ruth Henigs Versailles and
Peacemaking (HTML)
Instructions: Read all three articles to learn about the realities of the Great War. Then, revisit the poems
by Sassoon and Brooke in subunit 4.1.
As you read these articles and revisit the poems from subunit 4.1, consider the following study
questions: Do these poets achieve the reality of war? Why, or why not?
Reading these articles and answering the questions above should take approximately 2 hours.
4.3 The Great War and Poetry: Reflection, Disillusionment, and Bitter Critique
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Wilfred Owen, Biography of Thomas Hardy,
Biography of Siegfried Sassoon, and Biography of Isaac Rosenberg
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Wilfred Owen (HTML), Biography of Thomas
Hardy (HTML), Biography of Siegfried Sassoon (HTML), and Biography of Isaac
Rosenberg (HTML)
Instructions: Read these biographical essays on Wilfred Owen, Thomas Hardy, Siegfried Sassoon, and
Isaac Rosenberg. Together, they provide a narrative of various experiences of the end of the Victorian
Era and of the Great War.
Reading these essays and completing the writing activity should take approximately 2 hours and 30
minutes.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 7: World War I Poetry in England
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 7: World War I Poetry in
England (Adobe Flash, QuickTime, HTML, Mp3)
Instructions: Watch this lecture on World War I poetry in England. Take notes on Professor Hammers
analysis of the poems of Wilfred Owen, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac
Rosenberg.
As you watch this lecture, consider the following study questions: How would you characterize the
most important differences among these writers? How do the readings in subunit 4.2 help you
understand the poems analyzed by Professor Hammer in his lecture?
Watching the lecture, pausing to take notes, and answering the questions above should take
4.4 Poets Indictment of the War and European Civilization

4.4.1 Siegfried Sassoon
Reading: Bartleby: Siegfried Sassoons Repression of War Experience and The Rear-Guard
Link: Bartleby: Siegfried Sassoons Repression of War Experience (HTML) and The RearGuard (HTML)
Reading: AftermathWWI.com: Siegfried Sassoons On Passing the New Menin Gate
Link: AftermathWWI.com: Siegfried Sassoons On Passing the New Menin Gate (HTML)
Instructions: Read Sassoons poems. For each poem, consider the following study questions and
writing prompt: What do these poems say about the soldiers experience in war? What do these poems
tell us about World War I? Who is the intended audience? How would you characterize the poets
relationship to that audience? How would you explain the sources of these various poet-audience
relationships? Collectively, what do these poems say about European culture?
4.4.2 Wilfred Owens

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Wilfred Owens Arms and the Boy, Anthem for Doomed Youth,
and Dulce et Decorum Est
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Wilfred Owens Arms and the Boy (HTML), Anthem for Doomed
Youth (HTML), and Dulce et Decorum Est (HTML)
Instructions: Read Owens poems: Arms and the Boy, Anthem for Doomed Youth, and Dulce et
Decorum Est.
For each poem, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: What is the tone of each
poem? What do these poems say about the involvement of youth in war? Who is the intended
audience? How would you characterize the poets relationship to that audience? How would you
explain the sources of these various poet-audience relationships? Collectively, what do these poems say
about European culture? How do Owens poems compare to those of Sassoon?
4.4.3 John McCrae

Reading: Bartleby: John McCraes In Flanders Fields
Link: Bartleby: John McCraes In Flanders Fields (HTML)
Instructions: Read McCraes poem, In Flanders Fields. As you read, consider the following study
questions: In what ways do you see McCrae challenging the concept of war in this text? How does
McCraes poem compare to those of Sassoon and Owens?
4.4.4 Rudyard Kiplings Change of Heart

Reading: Web-Books.com: Rudyard Kiplings Epitaphs of the War
Link: Web-Books.com: Rudyard Kiplings Epitaphs of the War (HTML)
Instructions: Read Kiplings poem, Epitaphs of the War. As you read, consider the following study
questions: How does this poem compare and contrast to Kiplings poems that you have read earlier (see
subunit 1.3.2)? How does Kiplings approach to patriotism in Epitaphs of the War differ from the
poems in subunit 1.3.2?
Reading this poem and answering the question above should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: Great War Literature Magazine: W. Lawrances Rudyard Kipling Author, Poet, and
Quintessential Englishman
Link: Great War Literature Magazine: W. Lawrances Rudyard Kipling Author, Poet, and
Quintessential Englishman (HTML)
Instructions: Read this article to learn about the events that changed Kiplings view of the war. Then,
go back and re-read Epitaphs of the War.
As you read this article and review the poem, consider the following study questions: How does this
article inform your analysis of Epitaphs of the War? How would you describe Kiplings change of
heart, or changing attitude?
Reading this article, re-reading Epitaphs of the War, and answering the questions above should take
approximately 45 minutes.
4.4.5 e.e. cummings

Reading: Poets.org: e.e. cummings i sing of Olaf glad and big
Link: Poets.org: e.e. cummings i sing of Olaf glad and big (HTML)
Instructions: Read cummings poem, i sing of Olaf glad and big. e.e. cummings spent time as a
volunteer ambulance driver at the front in World War I, similar to Ernest Hemingway. He returned with
a far more negative position than Hemingway and was very active in articulating his position during the
lead up to World War II.
As you read this poem, consider the following study questions: How is this poem a pacifist poem?
What is the speakers position on war? How might one read this poem as an anti-war poem? How does
this poem compare and contrast to Kiplings Epitaphs of the War in terms of the genre of war poetry?
Reading: The Literature of Poetry: e.e. cummings next to of course god america I
Link: The Literature of Poetry: e.e. cummings next to of course god america I (HTML)
Instructions: Read e.e. cummings poem, next to of course god america i. Also, read the commentary
that follows the poem. Finally, listen to the recording of cummings reading this poem.
As you read the poem and listen to the recording, consider the following study questions: How is this
poem a pacifist poem? What is the speakers position on war? How does the speaker reconcile
patriotism and anti-war sentiments in this poem? How does this poem compare and contrast to
Kiplings Epitaphs of the War in terms of the genre of war poetry?
Reading this poem, reading the commentary, listening to the recording, and answering the questions
above should take approximately 45 minutes.
Reading: Harvard Magazine: Adam Kirschs The Rebellion of E.E. Cummings
Link: Harvard Magazine: Adam Kirschs The Rebellion of E.E. Cummings (HTML)
Instructions: Read this article about the range of cummings anti-establishment perspective. Then, go
back and re-read the poems by cummings in this subunit.
As you read this article and revisit the poems in this subunit, consider the following study question:
How does this article inform your reading of these poems?
Reading this article, re-reading the poems in this subunit, and answering the question above should take
4.5 Post-War Georgian Poetry and the Emergence of Modernist Poetry

Reading: Poetry X: Walter de la Mares The Truants
Link: Poetry X: Walter de la Mares The Truants (HTML)
Instructions: Read Walter de la Mares poem, written in 1920. As you read, consider the following
study question: What are the most important differences between this poem and the war-time poems
you studied in this unit?
Reading this poem and answering the question above should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: Literature Study Online: Stephen Colbourns The Georgian Poets and the War Poets
Link: Literature Study Online: Stephen Colbourns The Georgian Poets and the War Poets (HTML)
Instructions: Read this essay on the Georgian poets and war poets. After reading this essay, re-read
Mares poem in this subunit.
How does this essay inform your reading of The Truants?
approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes.

1. How and why did poets experiences in World War I drive them away from the genteel, chauvinistic,
naturalistic, and formalist qualities of late-Victorian poetry?
2. What do you think was the basis for Rudyard Kiplings conversion from the national chauvinism of
his early verse such as My Fathers Chair http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_fatherschair.htm to the
cultural criticism of his later work in Epitaphs of the War http://www.webbooks.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Epitaphs.htm ?
3. Discuss the distancing of any three of the following World War I and Georgian poets from lateVictorian poetic style or content: Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Siegfried
Sassoon, Thomas Hardy, and Isaac Rosenberg.
Unit 5: Other Modernist Movements: Futurism, Vorticism, and Objectivism

In this unit, you will study a sampling of the manifestos behind the poetry of three competing poetic
movements from the 1910s to 1930s: Futurism, Vorticism, and Objectivism. This unit will work to
define and characterize these movements. Futurism, often associated with Marinettis Manifesto of
Futurism, was an artistic and social movement that aimed to reject traditional forms of art (i.e., for
poetry, rejecting the rules that govern prosody) and focused on imagery as well as precision. Futurist
poets highlighted concepts of the future and developed a new language with the play of syntax and
alternative substitutions for meter, in the traditional sense. Vorticism, first introduced by Pounds essay
Vortex in BLAST, was inspired by Cubism as well as embraced the focus on the mechanical age
presented in Futurism. Vorticism focused on abstraction and typographical exploration, and it aimed to
capture movement and stillness within an image. In 1930, Objectivism was coined by William Carlos
Williams; in consideration of writing, he described this as having a special eye to its structural
aspects, how it has been constructed. This concept was expanded on by Louis Zukofsky, who
reluctantly pioneered Objectivism at Harriet Monroes request to give a name to his associated group
of poets. In response to Monroe, Zukofsky said, No, some of us are writing to say things simply so that
they will affect us as new again. The Objectivist agenda, as defined by Zukofsky, aimed for simplicity
and clarity, attempted to create something new, and treated a poem as an object. As you study the
material in this unit, consider how these movements compare and contrast to the rhetorical aim of
Imagism.

situate Vorticism, Futurism, and Objectivism in their broader historical context;
identify the most important poetic representatives of Vorticism, Futurism, and Objectivism; and
compare and contrast as well as discuss the formal qualities, uses of imagery and sound, and
rhetorical aims of Vorticism, Futurism, and Objectivism that distinguish these movements from
Imagism.
5.1 What Is Futurism?
Reading: Princeton University Press: Christine Poggis Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of
Artificial Optimism: Chapter 1: Futurist Velocities
Link: Princeton University Press: Christine Poggis Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of
Artificial Optimism: Chapter 1: Futurist Velocities (HTML)
Instructions: Read Chapter 1: Futurist Velocities, and take careful notes on the Futurist movement.
Reading this chapter, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Mina Loys Aphorisms on Futurism, Lunar Baedeker, and
Giovanni Franchi
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Mina Loys Aphorisms on Futurism (HTML), Lunar
Baedeker (HTML), and Giovanni Franchi (HTML)

Instructions: Read Mina Loys three poems: Aphorisms on Futurism, Lunar Baedeker, and
Giovanni Franchi. Also, read the introductory note to Aphorisms on Futurism as well as read
Jessica Bursteins article, accessible by clicking on the Poem Guide tab for Lunar Baedeker.
As you read these poems, consider the following study questions: How do Loys poems represent or
depart from Futurist poems? How does gender figure in these poems? How might one provide a
Feminist interpretation of her poems?
Studying these poems, reading the article, answering the questions above, and completing the writing
activity should take approximately 3 hours.
5.1.1 Italian Futurism

Reading: wendtroot.com: Italian Futurism
Link: wendtroot.com: Italian Futurism (HTML)
Instructions: Read this article on Italian Futurism, and take notes in order to compare and contrast
Italian Futurism with aspects of other modern poetry movements that have already been discussed.
Later on, you may use your notes to also draw comparisons among Futurism, Vorticism, and
Objectivism.
Reading this article and taking notes should take approximately 15 minutes.
Reading: University of Pennsylvania: Filippo Marinettis Excerpts from Manifesto of Futurism
Link: University of Pennsylvania: Filippo Marinettis Excerpts from Manifesto of Futurism (HTML)
Instructions: Read these two excerpts from Filippo Marinettis hugely influential 1909 Manifestoof
Futurism: The Joy of Mechanical Force and Futurist Manifesto.
As you read these excerpts, consider the following study questions: Why do you think there was such
an emphasis on the future during this era? What are the dominant images in this manifesto? How does
it represent modernity? Is the individual person important? Are there any anti-humanist or violent
elements in this text? What should a Futurist poet strive for in his or her art? How does Loys
Aphorisms on Futurism compare to Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism? What are the most important
differences between the two texts?
Reading these texts, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
5.1.2 Russian Futurism

Reading: Poets.org: A Brief Guide to Futurism and Biography of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Link: Poets.org: A Brief Guide to Futurism (HTML) and Biography of Vladimir
Mayakovsky (HTML)
Instructions: Read the guide to Futurism and take notes to learn about the distinctions between Italian
Futurism and Russian Futurism. Then, read the biography on Vladimir Mayakovsky, one of the
distinctive poets of Russian Futurism. It may be useful to review your notes on Italian Futurism.
As you read and review your notes, consider the following study question: What are the most important
differences between Russian and Italian Futurism?
Reading these texts, reviewing your notes, and answering the question above should take
5.1.3 Futurism and Fascism

Reading: History Today: Richard Jensens Futurism and Fascism
Link: History Today: Richard Jensens Futurism and Fascism (HTML)
Instructions: Read Futurism and Fascism to learn about Futurisms political connection.
As you read, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: What is the authors main
argument about the relationship between Futurism and Fascism? Do you find it convincing? Why, or
why not?
Reading this article, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
5.2 What Is Vorticism?

5.2.1 Introduction to Vorticism
Reading: Vorticism: Introduction [to Vorticism] and Modern Vorticists
Link: Vorticism: Introduction [to Vorticism] (HTML) and Modern Vorticists (HTML)
Instructions: Read the introduction to Vorticism. Then, read the brief information about modern
Vorticists.
Reading these sections should take approximately 15 minutes.
5.2.2 Pounds Vortex

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Ezra Pounds Vortex
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Ezra Pounds Vortex (HTML)
Instructions: Read the introductory note as well as Pounds essay, Vortex, which first appeared
in BLAST. This reading will help you understand the origins of the poetic movement of Vorticism as
well as will explain the rhetorical aims of the movement.
As you read, consider the following study question: How does Pounds explanation of Vorticism relate
to other movements like Imagism and Symbolism?
Reading this essay and answering the question above should take approximately 30 minutes.
5.2.3 Wyndham Lewis and the Vortex Manifesto

Reading: Vorticism: Biography of Wyndham Lewis
Link: Vorticism: Biography of Wyndham Lewis (HTML)
Instructions: Read this biography of Wyndham Lewis to better understand the artistic connection to
Vorticism.
As you read, consider the following questions: What inspired Lewis to strike out on his own to form his
own movement rather than to simply join one? Note that Vorticism was influenced by Cubism. How
might you see this transferred over to poetry?
Reading this biography and answering the questions above should take approximately 15 minutes.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Wyndham Lewis Long Live the Vortex! and Our Vortex
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Wyndham Lewis Long Live the Vortex! and Our Vortex (HTML)
Instructions: Read the introductory note as well as excerpts from Long Live the Vortex! and Our
Vortex, pieces published in BLAST as part of Lewis manifesto on Vorticism. Pay particular attention
to the early stages of the evolution of the Vorticist movement and its relationship to World War I.
Reading these texts should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: Brown University and The University of Tulsas The Modernist Journals Project: BLAST(No.
1, Ed. Wyndham Lewis)
Link: Brown University and The University of Tulsas The Modernist Journals Project: BLAST (No. 1,
Ed. Wyndham Lewis) (HTML)
Instructions: Using the scrolling tool on the left-hand side of the webpage, go to page 9 (Long Live
the Vortex!), and read the manifesto in its entirety (pp. 945). Once you have read the manifesto,
explore the magazines other pages, paying attention to both the language of the poems and the visual
aesthetic of this publication.
As you read, consider the following study questions: What are the most important claims this manifesto
makes about art? How are these different from the creed of the Symbolists and the Imagists? What do
you think was so revolutionary about BLAST?
Reading the text, answering the questions above, and exploring poems in BLAST should take
5.3 What Is Objectivism?

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Peter OLearys The Energies of Words
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Peter OLearys The Energies of Words (HTML)
Instructions: Read The Energies of Words to learn about Poetry Magazines legendary 1931
Objectivist issue and the origins as well as characteristics of the movement.
Reading this article should take approximately 1 hour.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Poetry, February 1931
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Poetry, February 1931 (HTML)
Instructions: Read the poems in the 1931 magazine issue, Poetry, dedicated to the Objectivists. Make
sure to study Louis Zukofsky's poem A: Seventh Movement: There Are Different Techniques, and
list the Objectivist elements that this poem illustrates.
Reading this issue of Poetry, studying Zukofskys poem, and identifying various Objectivist elements
should take approximately 2 hours.
Web Media: University of Pennsylvanias PennSound: Discussion at the Kelly Writers House,
Moderated by Bob Perelman
Link: University of Pennsylvanias PennSound: Discussion at the Kelly Writers House, Moderated by
Bob Perelman (Mp3)
Instructions: Select the links to each audio clip for: Introduction to the Objectivists, On Determining
Poetic Connections between Reznikoff, Zukofsky, and Oppen, and On Jewishness and the
Objectivists. Listen to these audio clips, and then define Objectivist poetry in your own words.
Listening to these recordings, pausing to take notes, and defining Objectivist poetry should take

You can test your content competency of unit 5 of Saylors ENGL408 course by outlining your specific
1. List and define as many of the named Modernist poetic movements referenced in the course as you
can. Then, write a brief essay comparing and contrasting two or more of the poetic movements. As you
write, consider how each movement fits into the rhetorical aims of Modernism.
2. What are the possible interrelationships between the tenets of Futurism that Futurists articulated in
various manifestos and the rise of Fascism in Europe?
3. What are specific characteristics that distinguish Italian Futurism from Russian Futurism?
Unit 6: High Modernism

The literary aesthetic of High Modernism, which represented the ways modernity was transforming
culture by experimenting with, adapting, and altering more traditional literary styles and forms, is best
understood as a profound ambivalence about both the present and the past.
Modernist poets tended toward fragmented and disjointed perspectives rather than cohesive or
coherent patterns in order to question rather than explain and to reject the illusive order of literary
artifice in a world of relative truth rather than objective truth. Their poetic expressions at times appear
to be the free associations. A work like Eliots Waste Land includes overarching patterns and echoing
classical or mythic narratives, but the allusions are foregrounded by very personal and opaque
commentary or by snapshots of interruptive images as if a bomb had exploded a churchs stained glass
window onto a citys dump-site.
The high modernist emphasis on individual experience over objective truth ironically also meant
incorporating elements of popular culture, which had not been thought literary enough for high art
until then, mixing in colloquialisms and dialects without the aid of an interpretive narrator. Pub diction
and Dante Italian and Sanskrit swirl in word searches for the holy grail of meaning in desiccated land
and cityscapes. The demands of high modernist style tapping into precious and arcane cultural allusion
without context or even perceived intention guaranteed a small, very educated elite readership and fed
an army of academic explicators. Then again, less obtuse and far more commercially successful poets
like Frost and Sandburg were viewed as sell-outs to bourgeois culture.
Probably the greatest irony of the high modernist poets was that the more that they protested
how new they were their use of highly traditional, even ancient, poetic forms grew. Ezra Pounds later
work providing the most obvious exemplars. This ambivalence may be best encapsulated by the title of
T. S. Eliots influential essay Tradition and the Individual Talent and such mind-twisting statements
as "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is
the appreciation of his relation to dead poets and artists. How that jives with Pounds modernist
mantra, Make it new, is the conundrum of these poets and their critics. Hart Cranes The Bridge
is probably the best example of this high modernist merging of a deep, almost impenetrable,
subjectivity with the traditional epic form.

identify the most important representatives of English and American High Modernism, analyze their
poems, and understand the poems historical context;
analyze the different stages, styles, and rhetorical aims of Ezra Pounds poetry;
analyze the poems and theoretical writings of T.S. Eliot;
characterize how the concept of the waste land functioned within high modernist poetry; and
contrast William Butler Yeats mature poetry against Pound and Eliot.
6.1 Make It New: The Complicated Relationship between High Modernism and Earlier
Texts
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 9: Ezra Pound
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 9: Ezra Pound (Adobe Flash,
Instructions: Watch this lecture on Ezra Pound, focusing on Professor Hammers analysis of Pounds
Canto I.
Watching this lecture, pausing to take notes, and completing the writing activity described above
should take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
6.2 Pounds Return of the Epic Form in Modern Poetry

Reading: Poets.org: Ezra Pounds The Cantos: Canto XIV
Link: Poets.org: Ezra Pounds The Cantos: Canto XIV (HTML)
Instructions: Before doing the readings for this subunit, please review your notes on Professor Langdon
Hammers lecture on Ezra Pound, which you listened to in subunit 6.1. Then, read Canto XIV in its
entirety.
Reviewing your notes, reading the text, and completing the writing activity should take 2 hours.
6.3 Eliots Tradition and the Individual Talent

Reading: Bartleby: T.S. Eliots Tradition and Individual Talent
Link: Bartleby: T.S. Eliots Tradition and Individual Talent (HTML)
Instructions: Read Tradition and Individual Talent. As you read, consider the following study
questions and writing prompt: What concept of individuality emerges from this essay? What does this
say and imply about the place of emotions in modern poetry?
6.4 The Artist in Exile: Ezra Pounds Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Reading: Modern American Poetry: Excerpts from Pounds Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Link: Modern American Poetry: Excerpts from Pounds Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (HTML)
Instructions: Scroll down the webpage to find selections from Pounds Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
As you read, compare this poem to other poems by Pound that you read in earlier subunits. Consider
the following study questions and writing prompt: What is unique about Pounds diction? What is the
effect of the various phrases borrowed from other languages? Can one say that this poem has formal or
thematic unity? Why, or why not?
Reading this text, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
6.5 The American Expatriates in Europe

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Gertrude Stein and Biography of H.D.
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Gertrude Stein (HTML) and Biography of
H.D. (HTML)
Instructions: Read the biographies of Gertrude Stein and H.D. to better understand the experiences of
expatriate women poets.
Reading these articles should take approximately 1 hour.
Reading: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library: Literary Expatriates in Paris
Link: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library: Literary Expatriates in Paris (HTML)
Instructions: Read this article on literary expatriates in Paris. As you read, consider the following study
question: Why, do you think, Americans would look to leave their country during this era?
Reading this article and answering the question above should take approximately 30 minutes.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Gertrude Steins A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass, A Little Called
Pauline, and New
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Gertrude Steins A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass (HTML), A Little
Called Pauline (HTML), and New (HTML)
Instructions: Read Steins three poems: A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass, A Little Called Pauline,
and New.
As you read these poems, consider the following study questions: How do these poems differ from
Imagist and other early modernist poems you studied previously in this course? What characteristics of
high modernism do you find in these poems?
6.6 William Butler Yeats: The Mature Years

Reading: The Literature Network: William Butler Yeats Easter, 1916 and The Second Coming
Link: The Literature Network: William Butler Yeats Easter, 1916 (HTML) and The Second
Coming (HTML)
Instructions: Read Yeats poems: Easter, 1916 and The Second Coming.
As you study these poems, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: How would you
relate The Second Coming to the events and aftermath of World War I? How does Yeats use biblical
imagery in this poem? How does the poems form work to support or subvert its message? What
characteristics of high modernism do you find in these poems?
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 5: William Butler Yeats (cont.)
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 5: William Butler Yeats (cont.) (Adobe
Instructions: Watch this lecture on William Butler Yeats. Note how Dr. Hammer interprets Yeats poetry
during World War I and in its aftermath as well as how he relates the poems to their historical context.
Watching this lecture and pausing to take notes should take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
6.7 A Heap of Broken Images: The Modern World as Waste Land

Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 10: T.S. Eliot, Lecture 11: T.S.
Eliot (cont.), and Lecture 12: T.S. Eliot (cont.)
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 10: T.S. Eliot (Adobe Flash,
QuickTime, HTML, Mp3), Lecture 11: T.S. Eliot (cont.) (Adobe Flash, QuickTime, HTML, Mp3),
and Lecture 12: T.S. Eliot (cont.) (Adobe Flash, QuickTime, HTML, Mp3)
Instructions: View Professor Hammers three lectures on T.S. Eliot. Take careful notes on the evolution
of Eliots literary techniques and understanding of modernist poetry.
Watching these lectures and pausing to take notes should take approximately 4 hours.
Reading: Project Gutenberg: T.S. Eliots The Waste Land
Link: Project Gutenberg: T.S. Eliots The Waste Land (HTML)
Instructions: Read Eliots 434-line poem, The Waste Land. As you read this poem, consider the ways in
which it is an emblem of the post-WWI sensibility. What features of the poem contribute to that
sensibility?
Reading this poem and answering the question above should take approximately 5 hours.
6.8 Hart Crane

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Hart Crane, Hart Cranes Legend, and Selections
from Hart Cranes The Bridge
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Hart Crane (HTML), Hart Cranes Legend (HTML),
and Selections from Hart Cranes The Bridge (HTML)
Instructions: Read the biography of Hart Crane. Then, read the poem Legend and selections from
The Bridge. Note the form and style of the poems, and summarize their content in your own words.
Reading the biography, studying the poems, and summarizing the form and style of the poems should
take approximately 2 hours.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Brian Reeds Hart Crane: Voyages

Link: The Poetry Foundation: Brian Reeds Hart Crane: Voyages (HTML)
Instructions: Read Reeds explication of Hart Cranes Voyages.
Reading this text should take approximately 1 hour.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 13: Hart Crane and Lecture 14:
Hart Crane, (cont.)
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lectures 13: Hart Crane (Adobe Flash,
QuickTime, HTML, Mp3) and Lecture 14: Hart Crane, (cont.) (Adobe Flash, QuickTime, HTML,
Mp3)
Instructions: As you watch these lectures on Hart Crane, take careful notes on Professor Hammers
analysis of Cranes poems, paying particular attention to the arguments proposed in the two
lectures. You may also download the transcripts of the lectures themselves by clicking on the link to the
transcript on the webpage.
Watching these lectures and pausing to take notes should take approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes.

You can test your content competency of unit 6 of Saylors ENGL408 course by outlining your specific
1. Discuss in detail Ezra Pounds contributions to the final production of T. S. Eliots iconic poem for
the 20thcentury, The Waste Land.
2. Explain what Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats meant when they referenced their
type of later poetry as High Modernism.
3. Compare and contrast the style of Wallace Stevenss Sunday Morning
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/wallace-stevens/sunday-morning/ with William Butler
Yeatss The Second Coming. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172062 .Based solely on these
two poems, how are they both classifiable as High Modernist?
4. Why did Hart Crane choose the iconic image of the Brooklyn Bridge as the focal point of his
almost epic poem titled Brooklyn Bridge
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma05/dulis/poetry/Crane/crane2.html ? How did Crane manifest his theme
of an individuals otherness within his or her own society?
Unit 7: Politics and the Harlem Renaissance

African American modernism, often referred to as the Harlem Renaissance, is crucial to the history of
modernist poetry. Starting in the 1920s and 30s, Harlem Renaissance poets like Langston Hughes,
Countee Cullen, and Jessie Redmon Fauset wrote poems that explored the African American
experience and the challenges of modernity. Poems from the Harlem Renaissance showed concerns
with grief, populist ideas, and pride and celebration of African American heritage and culture. The
poems focused on intellectualism, explored free verse, and aimed to strengthen the voice of the
speaker. In later years, writers like Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, and Robert Hayden created
new poetic forms in dialogue with both the Harlem Renaissance and broader developments in
American and African American culture.
In this unit, you will explore African American modernist poetry, and you will analyze its development,
its unique features, and how these poems achieved (or attempted to achieve) certain political aims. As
you study the poets and poems in this unit, consider how the themes and poetic devices used during the
Harlem Renaissance fit into the modernist idea of making something new. Also, consider how culture
and politics transformed the movement.

analyze the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, and relate it to other styles of modernist and socially
engaged American poetry of the 1920s and 1930s;
discuss the appeal of communism among this group, especially in the 1930s; and
identify the most influential African American modernist poets and discuss their literary projects.
7.1 The Harlem Renaissance
Reading: Poets.org: A Brief Guide to the Harlem Renaissance
Link: Poets.org: A Brief Guide to the Harlem Renaissance (HTML)
Instructions: Read A Brief Guide to the Harlem Renaissance. As you read, consider the following
study question: What were the most important characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance?
Reading: Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: Caroline Jacksons Harlem Renaissance: Pivotal Period
in the Development of Afro-American Culture
Link: Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: Caroline Jacksons Harlem Renaissance: Pivotal Period in
the Development of Afro-American Culture (HTML)
Instructions: Read this article on the Harlem Renaissance. This reading provides an introduction to the
movement as well as analyzes the styles of McKay, Cullen, Hughes, and Toomer, using excerpts from
poem to support the analysis. Take notes on the most influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance and
the most important events of this period.

Web Media: John Carroll University: The Harlem Renaissance Multimedia Resource
Link: John Carroll University: The Harlem Renaissance Multimedia Resource (HTML)
Instructions: Read the introduction. Then, click on the following tabs to learn about various aspects of
the Harlem Renaissance and to explore this multimedia resource: Education, Performers, French
Connection, Literature, Political Issues, Religion, and Philosophy. Make sure to focus on the
Literature section, and explore any embedded links.
Exploring this resource and completing the writing activity should take approximately 2 hours.
7.2 Creating the Canon of Black Poetry and Individual Legacies

7.2.1 W.E.B. Dubois The Strivings of Negro People
Reading: The University of Virginia: W.E.B. Du Bois The Strivings of Negro People
Link: The University of Virginia: W.E.B. Du Bois The Strivings of Negro People (HTML)
Instructions: Read Du Bois The Strivings of Negro People. This is an influential essay published by
W.E.B. Du Bois in the Atlantic Monthly in 1897.
As you read, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: Why do you think this essay
became so important? How does Du Bois characterize the cultural predicament of African Americans?
7.2.2 James Weldon Johnson

Reading: Bartleby: James Weldon Johnson (ed.)s The Book of American Negro Poetry: Preface
Link: Bartleby: James Weldon Johnson (ed.)s The Book of American Negro Poetry:Preface (HTML)
Instructions: Read James Weldon Johnsons Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry. As you
read, take notes on the text, focusing on how Johnsons Preface characterizes the achievements and
contributions of African Americans.
Reading this text should take approximately 3 hours.
7.2.3 Claude McKay

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Claude McKay
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Claude McKay (HTML)
Instructions: Read this biographical essay to learn about McKays life and his poetry.

Reading: Bartleby: Claude McKays If We Must Die and The Harlem Dancer
Link: Bartleby: Claude McKays If We Must Die (HTML) and The Harlem Dancer (HTML)
Instructions: Read McKays poems: If We Must Die and The Harlem Dancer. As you study these
poems, consider the following study questions: How do these poems engage social issues? How does
each poems form affect its message?
Studying these poems and answering the questions above should take approximately 30 minutes.
7.2.4 Countee Cullen

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Countee Cullen
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Countee Cullen (HTML)
Instructions: Read this biographical essay to learn about the life and works of Countee Cullen.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Countee Cullens A Brown Girl Dead, Heritage, and For Amy
Lowell
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Countee Cullens A Brown Girl Dead (HTML), Heritage (HTML),
and For Amy Lowell (HTML)
Instructions: Read Cullens poems: A Brown Girl Dead, Heritage, and For Amy Lowell.
Compare the poems formal qualities and their message.
What are the universal aspects of these poems? What are their political aspects? How would you
characterize the speakers attitude toward life? Based on what you learned about Amy Lowells poetry,
how do you think Lowell might have responded to Cullens poem?
7.2.5 Langston Hughes

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Langston Hughes
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Biography of Langston Hughes (HTML)
Instructions: Read this biographical essay to learn about Hughes life and the role he played in the
Harlem Renaissance.
Lecture: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 15: Langston Hughes
Link: Yale University: Professor Langdon Hammers Lecture 15: Langston Hughes (HTML)
Instructions: Watch this lecture and take notes on Professor Hammers analysis of Hughes poetry and
his historical context.
Watching this lecture and pausing to take notes should take approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Langston Hughes The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Langston Hughes The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (HTML)
Instructions: Read the introductory note as well as Hughes essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain. As you read, consider the following study question: How does Hughes analyze the
relationship between race and poetry?
Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Elizabeth Alexanders The Black Poet as Canon-Maker
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Elizabeth Alexanders The Black Poet as Canon-Maker (HTML)
Instructions: Read Alexanders essay, The Black Poet as Canon-Maker. As you read, consider the
following study question: What does Alexanders essay add to your understanding of the Harlem
Renaissance?
Web Media: YouTube: Langston Hughes Ku Klux
Link: YouTube: Langston Hughes Ku Klux (YouTube)
Instructions: Listen to this audio version of Hughes Ku Klux read aloud. If necessary, listen to the
poem read aloud multiple times.
As you listen to this recording, consider the following questions and writing prompt: What is the
meaning of this poem? How does this connect to a political, social, and historical context? What is the
mood of this poem? How does irony function in this poem? Write a paragraph to summarize your
analysis. Consider posting your paragraph to the ENGL408 Course Discussion Board, and respond to
other students posts.
Listening to this poem, answering the questions above, and completing the writing activity should take
Reading: Modern American Poetry: Onwucheka Jemie, Bartholomew Brinkman, and John Moores
On Ku Klux
Link: Modern American Poetry: Onwucheka Jemie, Bartholomew Brinkman, and John MooresOn
Ku Klux (HTML)
Instructions: Read this collection of analyses on Hughes Ku Klux, compiled by the Modern
American Poetry project.
As you read, consider the following study question: What are the similarities and differences between
these analyses and your own interpretation of Hughes Ku Klux?
Reading this text and answering the question above should take approximately 45 minutes.
Reading: Modern American Poetry: James Smethursts Langston Hughes in the 1930s
Link: Modern American Poetry: James Smethursts Langston Hughes in the 1930s (HTML)
Instructions: Read Smethursts essay on Langston Hughes. As you read, consider the following
question: What is the rationale for Hughes interest in Communism?
7.3 Cultural Challenges of Three African-American Women Poets

Reading: Poets.org: Anthony Waltons Double-Bind: Three Women of the Harlem Renaissance
Link: Poets.org: Anthony Waltons Double-Bind: Three Women of the Harlem Renaissance (HTML)
Instructions: Read Waltons essay on the women of the Harlem Renaissance.
As you read, consider the following study question: How does this essay characterize the dilemmas and
challenges faced by African American women poets during the Harlem Renaissance? Write a paragraph
to summarize your thoughts. Consider posting your paragraph to the ENGL408 Course Discussion
Board, and respond to other students posts.
7.3.1 Jesse Redmon Fauset

Reading: Poets.org: Jesse Redmon Fausets Dead Fires and La Vie C'est La Vie
Link: Poets.org: Jesse Redmon Fausets Dead Fires (HTML) and La Vie C'est La Vie (HTML)
Instructions: Read Fausets poems: Dead Fires and La Vie Cest La Vie. As you study these poems,
consider the following study questions: What are your interpretations of these poems? What cultural
challenges are explored in these poems? What is their formal structure? How would you compare these
to other Harlem Renaissance poems you have read so far? Studying these poems and answering the
questions above should take approximately 30 minutes.
7.3.2 Georgia Douglas Johnson

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Georgia Douglas Johnsons Common Dust and Smothered Fires
Link: The Poetry Foundation: Georgia Douglas Johnsons Common Dust (HTML) andSmothered
Fires (HTML)
Instructions: Read Johnsons poems: Common Dust and Smothered Fires. Identify the formal
qualities, tone, and imagery in these poems.
As you read, consider the following study questions: What cultural challenges are expressed in these
poems? How would you compare these poems to Jesse Redmon Fausets poems?
Reading: Poet.org: Georgia Douglas Johnsons Black Woman and The Heart of a Woman
Link: Poet.org: Georgia Douglas Johnsons Black Woman (HTML) and The Heart of a
Woman (HTML)
Instructions: Read Johnsons poems: Black Woman and The Heart of a Woman. Identify the formal
qualities, dominant tone, and imagery in these poems.
As you read, consider the following study questions: What cultural challenges are expressed in these
poems? How would you compare them to Jesse Redmon Fausets poems that you studied in the
previous subunit?
7.3.3 Gwendolyn Bennett

Reading: Poets.org: Gwendolyn Bennetts Quatrains, Fantasy, Sonnet 1, and Sonnet 2
Link: Poets.org: Gwendolyn Bennetts Quatrains (HTML), Fantasy (HTML), Sonnet 1 (HTML),
and Sonnet 2 (HTML)
Instructions: Read Bennetts poems: Quatrains, Fantasy, Sonnet 1, and Sonnet 2. Identify the
formal qualities, dominant tone, and imagery in these poems.
As you read these poems, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: How would you
compare them with other Harlem Renaissance poems? What cultural challenges are expressed in these
poems?

You can test your content competency of Unit 7 of Saylors ENGL408 course by outlining your specific
1. Anthony Walton stated, The women poets of the Harlem Renaissance faced one of the classic
American double-binds: they were black, and they were female, during an epoch when the building of
an artistic career for anyone of either of those identities was a considerable challenge. Discuss the
nature of the double-bind that African-American women poets encountered in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.
2. How did Georgia Douglas Johnson, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Jesse Redmond Faucet overcome
the double-bind obstacles of being African-American and female?
3. Discuss at least three of the following poets unique contributions to the Harlem Renaissance:
Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and James Weldon Johnson.
Unit 8: Poetic Responses to World War II, the Holocaust, and the Global Nuclear Threat
In this unit, you will take a look at World War II poetry, keeping in mind the representation of war and
violence we encountered in the World War I poems so as to compare and contrast these eras of poetry
and the approach to the war poem. Consider whether the WWII poems more accurately address the
realities of war. The question to consider in this unit and one that modernist poets toward the end of the
movement sought to address is: Are the horrors of the World Wars, multiple genocides, and threat of
nuclear incineration of cities and potentially the entire planet so monumental that they can only
become trivialized by being spoken about as expository narrative or re-interpreted as art?
In this unit, you will study poetry that responded to World War II, the Holocaust, Japanese-American
internment, and the Atomic Age. This unit will introduce you to World War II poets like Randall Jarrell,
Keith Douglas, and Karl Shapiro as well as Japanese internment poets like Violet Kazue de Cristoforo.

describe and analyze how World War II, the Holocaust, and the Atomic Age influenced Western
culture and its poetic expression;
analyze how the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was expressed in poetry;
and
identify prominent World War II poets, and characterize their styles and rhetorical aims.
8.1 The Holocaust: Representing the Unrepresentable
Reading: Michigan Quarterly Review: Jay Ladins After the End of the World: Poetry and the
Holocaust
Link: Michigan Quarterly Review: Jay Ladins After the End of the World: Poetry and the
Holocaust (HTML)
Instructions: Read Ladins essay, After the End of the World: Poetry and the Holocaust.
As you read this essay, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: What arguments
does the author make about the possibility of writing poetry after the Holocaust? What do you think is
the role of poetry in the face of genocide?
Reading: Michigan Quarterly Review: Alicia Ostrikers Holocaust Poetry: Another View
Link: Michigan Quarterly Review: Alicia Ostrikers Holocaust Poetry: Another View (HTML)
Instructions: Read Ostrikers essay, Holocaust Poetry: Another View.
As you read this essay, consider the following study questions: What is Ostriker's main argument? Do
you find it compelling? Why, or why not? Do the quotes of poetry that she provides support her
argument? Why, or why not?
Reading this essay and answering the questions above should take approximately 1 hour.
Web Media: The University of Pennsylvanias PennSound: Charles Reznikoff Reads

from Holocaust
Link: The University of Pennsylvanias PennSound: Charles Reznikoff Reads from Holocaust (MP3)
Instructions: Select the links to each audio clip as Reznikoff reads excerpts from Holocaust, starting
from 2. Research I through Mass Graves 5.
As you listen to the recordings, consider the following study question: How are poetic representations
different from prose historical representations of the Holocaust? Listening to these recordings, pausing
to take notes, and answering the question above should take approximately 45 minutes.
8.2 Japanese-American Internment Camp Poetry

8.2.1 Overview of the Japanese-American Internment Camps
Reading: George Mason Universitys History Matters: Executive Order 9066: The President
Authorizes Japanese Relocation
Link: George Mason Universitys History Matters: Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes
Japanese Relocation (HTML)
Instructions: Read the Executive Order 9066 for historical context about the relocation of JapaneseAmericans to internment camps.
Reading this text should take approximately 15 minutes.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyrights and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.
See a broken link? Please let us know!
Reading: Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies: Letters from the Japanese American
Internment
Link: Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies: Letters from the Japanese American
Internment (HTML)
Instructions: Study the Smithsonians learning module on Japanese-American internment camps. Click
on the links from Clara Breed through Legacies. Take notes on the Americans attitudes toward
internment as well as the historical context of this period to use later in consideration of poetry written
during this time.
Reading these webpages should take approximately 45 minutes.
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8.2.2 Wartime Kaikos (Free-Style Haikus)

Reading: Modern American Poetry: Violet Kazue de Cristoforos Pre-War Japanese American
Haiku
Link: Modern American Poetry: Violet Kazue de Cristoforos Pre-War Japanese American
Haiku (HTML)
Instructions: Read Violet Kazue de Cristoforos essay on the pre-war Japanese American Kaikos, or
free-style Haikus.
As you read, consider the following study questions and writing prompt: What are the major concerns
of pre-war Japanese American haikus? How does the historical information from subunit 8.2.1 inform
your reading of these haikus?
Reading: Lantern Review Blog: Poetry in History: Japanese American Internment

Link: Lantern Review Blog: Poetry in History: Japanese American Internment (HTML)
Instructions: Read this essay to learn about the Japanese American poets in internment camps during
World War II.
Reading: Voices [Education Project]: World War II Poets: Violet Kazue de Cristoforo
Link: Voices [Education Project]: World War II Poets: Violet Kazue de Cristoforo (HTML)
Instructions: Read this brief biography of Violet Kazue de Cristoforo as well as a few of her haiku
poems.
As you read, consider the following study question: How would you describe the relationship of these
haikus to the experience of internment?
Web Media: NPR: Sasha Khokhas Haiku Poet Documented Life in Japanese Camps
Link: NPR: Sasha Khokhas Haiku Poet Documented Life in Japanese Camps (Mp3)
Instructions: Select the play tool to listen to the full story concerning the role of haikus in JapaneseAmerican internment camps through NPR.orgs website.
As you listen to this podcast, consider the following study question: What function did the haiku serve
in the Japanese American internment camps?

Listening to this recording, pausing to take notes, and answering the question above should take
8.3 WWII Soldier Poets

8.3.1 Randall Jarrell
Reading: Western Michigan University: Randall Jarrells The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Link: Western Michigan University: Randall Jarrells The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (HTML)
Instructions: Read Jarrells poem, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. As you read, consider the
following study questions: What is the meaning of this poem? What does it say about the value of
human life during war? What is Jarrells intention with the use of metaphor?
Reading: Modern American Poetry: Randall Jarrells The Refugees

Link: Modern American Poetry: Randall Jarrells The Refugees (HTML)
Instructions: Read Jarrells poem, The Refugees. As you read, consider the following study
questions: What are the poems key themes and ideas? How does this poem compare and contrast to the
World War I poems you read in Unit 4?
8.3.2 Keith Douglas

Reading: Voices [Education Project]: The Poets of World War II: Keith Douglas
Link: Voices [Education Project]: The Poets of World War II: Keith Douglas (HTML)
Instructions: Read the brief biographical introduction. Then, study all of the poems reproduced on this
page by first reading them and then listening to the recordings: Vergissmeinnich, How to Kill,
Cairo Jag, and Simplify Me When Im Dead. To access the recordings, follow the YouTube links.
Examine the rhyme scheme of each poem, and note the tone of these poems.
As you study these poems, consider the following study questions: How do these poems represent the
war experience? What are the effects of their forms? How are they different from early modernist and
high modernist poems you studied in previous units?
Studying these poems, listening to the recordings, and answering the questions above should take
8.3.3 Karl Shapiro

Reading: Voices [Education Project]: The Poets of World War II: Karl Shapiro
Link: Voices [Education Project]: The Poets of World War II: Karl Shapiro (HTML)
Instructions: Read the brief biographical note as well as Shapiros poems: Elegy for a Dead Soldier
and Epitaph. Recall that an elegy is a poetic form that is a serious reflection and lament for the
deceased. Note both the differences and the similarities between Shapiros poems and the poems of
both Randall Jarrell and Keith Douglas.
Reading these texts and comparing and contrasting Shapiros poems to Jarrell and Douglas should take
8.4 The Atom Bomb and Its Impact on Culture

Reading: The Christian Science Monitor: Jim Regans The Atomic Bomb in American Culture
Link: The Christian Science Monitor: Jim Regans The Atomic Bomb in American Culture (HTML)
Instructions: Read Jim Regans article on the atom bomb and its impact on culture.
As you read, consider the following study question: How would you describe the impact that the
atomic bomb had on American culture?
Reading: University of Pennsylvania: Professor Al Filreis Cultural Aspects of Atomic Anxiety

Link: University of Pennsylvania: Professor Al Filreis Cultural Aspects of Atomic Anxiety (HTML)
Instructions: Read Professor Filreis Cultural Aspects of Atomic Anxiety. Write a paragraph to
summarize the most important ways in which the invention and use of the atomic bomb influenced
European and American culture in a fatalistic manner. Consider posting your paragraph to
theENGL408 Course Discussion Board, and respond to other students posts.
Reading this article and completing the writing activity should take approximately 1 hour.
Reading: The Peace Pledge Project: Alison Fells August 6, 1945

Link: The Peace Pledge Project: Alison Fells August 6, 1945 (HTML)
Instructions: Read Alison Fells poem, August 6, 1945. Make sure to also read the information,
history, and ideas on this poem.
Reading: The Peace Pledge Project: Denise Levertovs Talk in the Dark
Link: The Peace Pledge Project: Denise Levertovs Talk in the Dark (HTML)
Instructions: Read Denise Levertovs poem, Talk in the Dark.
Consider the role of the poet in alerting fellow citizens about the end of the world as we know it. As
you read the poems in this unit, consider the following study questions: How is artistic innovation
influenced by political commitments? Should it be? Does literature have ethical responsibilities?
Studying this poem and completing the writing activity should take approximately 1 hour.

1. Compare and contrast the poetic styles and political purposes of the WW II poets, including those in
Japanese-American internment camps, with their counterparts from WW I?
2. Go to the Peace Movement website http://www.ppu.org.uk/ and respond to the following prompts:
The Peace Movement appropriated the voices of those poets who wrote critically of World War II and
the atomic bombing of Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In your opinion, does poetry have the power
to change peoples minds and hearts? What poetry in this course has affected you in this way? Try to be
specific in your response.
3. What is the difference between the British war memorial tradition of handing out red poppies after
WW I and the peace movement tradition of handing out white poppies after WW II? How do the poems
from Units 4 and 8 reflect or resist these attitudes toward war and cultural traditions?
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyrights and terms of use displayed on the material referenced in
the course above.

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Unit 1 Learning Outcomes

1.1.2 Differentiating Our Modernist Terminology

1.2 A Victorian-Era Sampler: The Moderns Antithesis

1.2.2 Rudyard Kipling

1.2.3 Matthew Arnold

Link: Victorian Web: Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach (HTML)

1.2.4 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tale: Paul Reveres Ride.

1.2.5 John Greenleaf Whittier

1.3 Introduction to Modern Poetry and Robert Frost

Unit 1 Essay Exam Type of Assessment

Unit 2: The French Symbolists: The Fountainhead of Modernism

Unit 2 Learning Outcomes

2.2 Charles Baudelaire, Father of Modern Poetry

2.3 Arthur Rimbaud, Stphane Mallarm, and the French Symbolists

Unit 2 Essay Exam Type of Assessment

Unit 3: Early Modernist Movements: Symbolism, Imagism, and Their Relatives

Unit 3 Learning Outcomes

3.1 The Decadent Symbolists

Reading: Bartleby: William Butler Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole

3.3 Wallace Stevens as an American Symbolist

3.4 What Is Imagism?

Reading this text should take less than 15 minutes.

3.5 Ezra Pounds Early Experiments with Symbolism and Imagism

3.6 H.D.s Imagist Poems

3.7 Amy Lowells Imagism and Amygism

3.8 Marianne Moore: The Grand Promoter

3.9 William Carlos Williams: Movement and Stasis

Unit 3 Essay Exam Type of Assessment

Completing this assessment should take approximately 3 hours.

Unit 4: Poetry of World War I and Its Aftermath

Unit 4 Learning Outcomes

4.2 Realities of Modern Warfare

4.4 Poets Indictment of the War and European Civilization

4.4.2 Wilfred Owens

4.4.3 John McCrae

4.4.4 Rudyard Kiplings Change of Heart

4.4.5 e.e. cummings

4.5 Post-War Georgian Poetry and the Emergence of Modernist Poetry

Unit 4 Essay Exam Type of Assessment

Unit 5: Other Modernist Movements: Futurism, Vorticism, and Objectivism

Unit 5 Learning Outcomes

Baedeker (HTML), and Giovanni Franchi (HTML)

5.1.1 Italian Futurism

5.1.2 Russian Futurism

5.1.3 Futurism and Fascism

5.2 What Is Vorticism?

5.2.2 Pounds Vortex

5.2.3 Wyndham Lewis and the Vortex Manifesto

5.3 What Is Objectivism?

Unit 5 Essay Exam Type of Assessment

Unit 6: High Modernism

Unit 6 Learning Outcomes

6.2 Pounds Return of the Epic Form in Modern Poetry

6.3 Eliots Tradition and the Individual Talent

6.4 The Artist in Exile: Ezra Pounds Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

6.5 The American Expatriates in Europe

6.6 William Butler Yeats: The Mature Years

6.7 A Heap of Broken Images: The Modern World as Waste Land

6.8 Hart Crane

Reading: The Poetry Foundation: Brian Reeds Hart Crane: Voyages