An Introduction to (Modernist) Poetry

1. An Introduction to (Modernist) Poetry T.S. Eliot Wallace Stevens e.e. cummings

2. Agenda An Introduction to Eliot, Stevens, and Cummings Freudian Approaches to Reading (essayoption) T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Wallace Stevens: The Emperor of Ice Cream e. e. cummings: i carry your heart with me, in time of daffodils(who know, anyone lived in a pretty how town Note: all material not covered today will be moved to next week! Peer Partner Assignment: Selecting a focus for your Term Paper Question Set #4 on the Readings/Discussion

3. Lots of Lecture! Take notes Be patient and take it all in Ask Questions (lots of them) Write down terms that you need more help in understanding; I can work with you one-on-one You can “do” poetry 

4. How to Read Poetry You have a handout on “how to read poetry”** Reading at this level requires writing Engage Question Take nothing at face value Take risks

5. Dr. Sigmund Freud 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939

6. psychoa'nalysis. Treating disorders of the personality or behavior by bringing into a patient’s consciousnesshis unconsciousconflicts and fantasies (which are attributed chiefly to the development of the sexual instinct) through the free association of ideas, analysis and interpretation of dreams and allowing him to relive them by transference. A theory of personality and psychical life derived from this, based on concepts of the ego, id, and super-ego, the conscious, pre-conscious, and unconscious levels of the mind, and the repression of the sexual instinct; more widely, a branch of psychology dealing with the unconscious.

7. The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899/1900

8. A Simplified Outline of Freud’s Ideas • Like the work of many other important thinkers, Freud’s work is complex and not fully consistent. • His thinking evolved over the course of 50 years, and he often changed or rejected parts of his earlier thinking. • Many later parts of his work, when he was old and mortally ill, were expressed quite schematically. • Broadly speaking, Freud’s work traces the relationship among a number of different systems or structures of the human psyche. • The elements include:

9. The elements of the psyche: • The Id • The Ego • The Superego

10. The areas of the mind: • The Unconscious • The Preconscious • The Conscious

11. The fundamental instinctive drives • Eros • Thanatos

12. The Id • At birth the individual is psychically not fully formed-- totally unconscious mass of instinctive desires • The individual is unaware that she or he is an individual • The child assumes that it is the world, complete and self-sufficient • The child has no real awareness of self • The child is a bundle of drives seeking to fulfill the pleasure principle

13. All its actions are pure manifestations of the two major drives EROS and THANATOS, though at this stage EROS seems completely dominant The child is thus totally driven to seek pleasure; it is a collection of wants in search of immediate satisfaction The primary satisfaction it seeks is through its oral area, by putting things in its mouth

14. Pre-Modernist/Modernist Advances in technology World War I, World War II Industrialization Media and wide-spread knowledge distribution

15. Modernism The term modernism refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities in art and literature after World War I. The ordered, stable and inherently meaningful world view of the nineteenth century could not, wrote T.S. Eliot, accord with “the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.’.. rejecting nineteenth-century optimism, [modernists] presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray.”

16. T.S. Eliot 1888—1965

17. Biography • BIRTH: • Thomas Stearns Eliot • September 26, 1888 in Missouri • CHILDHOOD: • father, Henry Ware Eliot • the president of the Hydraulic Brick Company • mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns • volunteer at the Humanity Club of St. Louis • was a teacher. • At the time of Eliot’s birth, his parents were in their mid-forties • siblings were already grown. • EDUCATION: • attended Harvard University • left with a masters and undergraduate degrees. • returned to Harvard to receive a Phd in philosophy

18. Biography Toured the continent after Harvard 1915 married first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood 1917 began working at Lloyd’s bank in London 1925 left the bank to work at a publishing firm 1927 converted to Anglicanism, dropped U.S. citizenship, became a British subject 1933 separated from Vivienne

19. Biography • 1948 won Nobel prize • 1957 married Esme Valerie Fletcher • Had been his secretary at the publishing house since 1949 • 37 years his junior (he was nearly 70, she was 32) • Preserved his literary legacy after Eliot’s death • In 1965, he died of emphysema in London at the age of seventy-seven • 1983 won two posthumous Tony Awards for “Cats”

20. Themes • Eliot’s theories about modern poetry are enacted in his work: • his writing exemplifies not only modernity, but also the modernist mode • it seeks to put the reader off balance so as to capture the incoherence and dislocations of a bewildering age. • the modern individual is “no longer at ease here” • he has witnessed the birth of something new and unprecedented, and finds the change to be a “[h]ard and bitter agony” • he also attempts to counteract its disorderliness: • bringing disparate elements into some sort of conceptual unity. • “The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together”

21. Aesthetic Views A poem should be an organic thing in itself, a made object Once it is finished, the poet will no longer have control of it It should be judged, analyzed by itself without the interference of the poet’s personal influence and intentional elements and other elements

22. Reflection of Life: • Modern life is chaotic, futile, fragmentary • Eliot argues that modern poetry “must be difficult” to match the intricacy of modern experience. • poetry should reflect this fragmentary nature of life: • “ The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning” • this nature of life should be projected, not analyzed

23. Style/Technique • disconnected images/symbols • literary allusions/references • Sometimes VERY obscure!!! • highly expressive meter • rhythm of free verses • metaphysical whimsical images/whims • flexible tone

24. Prufrock • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock • love • indecision • Powerlessness, impotence • Stream-of-consciousness • The impotence and sterility of the modern world; cultural fragmentation • disaffected sexual relationships in the modern, faithless world • The disrupted cycles of: • death and regeneration • decay and growth; • the possibility of spiritual and aesthetic unity: • through religious belief and mythic structure;

25. Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) The devotion to the making of money and poetry as a businessman, a lawyer, and a poet: money→sensuousexperience→the basic element of his poetry Stay-at-home type: not through traveling but through art, literature, and philosophy to acquire the essence of the European culture Influenced by French symbolist poets: thephilosophical thoughts are instilled in his poetry

26. Philosphy • Focus: the relationship between reality and poetry, nature and imagination • 2 kinds of reality: a. The objective reality: the perceptions by the five senses b. The subjective reality: mental world dominated by imagination (to arrange the chaotic information from the sensual perception)

27. Hedonism: the significance on the enjoyment of sensual emotions • Poetry of statement: an act of faith in the sense of “nothingness” in reality • Simple lines: an emphasis on vocabulary and imagery rather than prosody • The faith in poetry: when no one believes in God, it is necessary to believe in something else, such as poetry, a thing created by imagination

28. The Emperor of Ice-Cream<Stanza I> Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. -------------------------------------------------------- concupiscent: a strong desire, especially sexual desire; lust. curds: a coagulated liquid

29. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys 5 Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. -------------------------------------------------------- wench: a young woman or girl, especially a peasant girl; a wanton woman dawdle: to waste time by idling

30. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. -------------------------------------------------------- be: what is finale: the concluding part seem: what appears

31. <Stanza II> Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet 10 On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. --------------------------------------------- deal:plain, unfinished wood. fantails: any of a breed of domestic pigeons having a rounded, fan-shaped tail

32. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. 15 The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. -------------------------------------------------------- horny: tough and calloused; (vulgar slang: sexually aroused) protrude: to push outward affix: secure, append

33. e.e. cumminngs 1894-1962

34. Life • Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894. He received his B.A. in 1915 and his M.A. in 1916, both from Harvard. • During the First World War, Cummings worked as an ambulance driver in France, but was interned in a prison camp by the French authorities (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions. • After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris.

35. Works • In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. • Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work towards further evolution. • Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex. • At the time of his death in 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost.